‘Marvels and monstrosities from all quarters of the globe’: the Museum of the Hartley Institution, Southampton, and its Global Collections, c. 1862–c. 1902

Mcaleer, John (2026) ‘Marvels and monstrosities from all quarters of the globe’: the Museum of the Hartley Institution, Southampton, and its Global Collections, c. 1862–c. 1902. Journal of the History of Collections. (In Press)

Record type: Article

Abstract

Although the museum of the Hartley Institution was ostensibly intended to display local material, it attracted donations from much further afield. Southampton’s connections in the second half of the nineteenth century were global, as the Indian butterflies, Australian boomerangs and numerous other items from around the world that entered the collection attest. The expanding reach of the British Empire, both formal and informal, as well as the port’s international commercial maritime links were reflected in the objects that ended up in the Hartley Institution. The geographical and historical origins of the institution’s collections underscore the ways in which the local and the global – in terms of both connections and collections – were equally important in establishing the museum’s remit. Centrifugal forces always exerted a considerable pull, drawing the focus of the collections and the museum to the wider horizons of Britain’s nineteenth-century maritime world.

Text

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