Filippoupoliti, A. (2011). Public Museums. In J. H. Overfield (Ed.), World History Encyclopedia, Era 7: The Age of Revolutions, 1750-1914. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO. Retrieved from http://ebooks.abc- clio.com/reader.aspx?isbn=9781851099757&id=A1730C-2974 Page 243, “Public Museums” Anastasia Filippoupoliti The emergence of the first public museums is a European phenomenon. From the princely and aristocratic cabinets of curiosities (or wonder rooms) of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to the public museum as experienced in the twenty-first century, there exists a long history of continuous reshaping, which has affected dramatically the identity, role, and function of this institution. The process of transformation from an elitist establishment to a publicly accessible site is strongly associated with the social, political, and cultural contexts of each period and country. In the middle of the eighteenth century, the intellectual and philosophical underpinnings of the Enlightenment valued encyclopedic knowledge and the ability of human reason to organize this knowledge according to general principles. In this context, the purpose of collecting was geared toward systematic classification and exhibition according to scientific guidelines. The accumulation of natural and man-made curiosities gradually shifted to ordered groups of objects. The foundation of the first public museums took place in the middle of the eighteenth century. At that point, the definition of the museum became tied to the specific building that housed collections for public view. Private collections, sold or bequeathed to public museums, formed the core of these institutions. Yet what was “public” remained ambivalent, since access was initially intended for respected groups of the upper middle class and the aristocracy on an intermittent basis. The British Museum in London was the main example of the transitional phase from private to public viewing of collections. The British Museum, which was founded in 1753 by an act of Parliament, was on the threshold of the process of democratization of museums. Following the acquisition of the collection of natural history specimens,