The Business of Museums: towards a history of collections in La Plata's Museum, 1888-1906

FARRO, MÁXIMO

World Archaeological Bulletin

World Archaeological Congress

Lugar: Brisbane, Australia; Año: 1999 vol. 10 p. 13 - 21

1442-4096

The general purpose of our research is to analyse the different strategies that were developed at the La Platas's Museum between 1888 and 1906 tocreate, support and enlarge the museum's collections and exhibitions. his period began with the Museum's foundation in 1888, an event inspired by Francisco Pascasio Moreno's provincial museum project. The period  concluded with the transfer of the Museum to the La Plata National University in 1906. The Museum foundation attended to a specific problem: to classify, show, and thus to create a national space until then undefined. The classification of that "desert" by scientific institutions effectively defined the domain of the State, not just the characteristics of a partcular part ofthe world. That classification not only included the flora and the fauna, but also the indigenous people who inhabited the land, and as consequence, anthropological and archaeological studies were included as part of the "natural history" of the nation. The La Plata Museum, at least during the first years, exhibited only anthropological remains and aboriginal material culture, to show the first stages of the evolution of national territory.