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In Santiago de Chile, men who viewed themselves as progressive scientists and thinkers created a collection including a stuffed elephant, Egyptian mummies, rocks, flags and bone china as a physical representation of Chile. The collection, housed in the Museo Nacional, served research, as a showpiece for foreign visitors and for bolstering Chile's claims to modern nationhood. Although not formally founded until 1838, many accounts root the museum in the independence period because, in 1813 with the ink on the declaration of independence barely dry, the Senate's executive committee voted to found a national museum at the Universidad de San Felipe, as well as create the Instituto Nacional, the Biblioteca Nacional and a botanical garden. Manuel Velasco was to be the director of the new museum, the collection of which was based on an already-existing mineral display. Even though Chile was not able to maintain its independence and records do not indicate that the museum ever existed, the later status of the Museo Nacional stems in part from its links to this early stage of nation formation: the older the museum, the longer the official patronage of natural science. In the second attempt to start a science museum, Supreme Director Bernardo O'Higgins appointed Juan José Dauxion Lavaysse to found and direct a national museum, ordering him to explore the national territory in order to investigate possibilities for foreign colonisation and to propose improvements to transit. Lavaysse, an adventurer who impressed Chileans with his wide but superficial knowledge, never made the assigned journey or founded the museum. It was finally begun because of the travels and collecting of the French naturalist, Claudio Gay , working under contract to the Chilean government between 1830-1833.
Again, histories of the museum point out that the Chilean government, due to its investment in scientific inquiry, offered Gay a contract. Nonetheless, historian Ernesto Greve cites primary sources proving that the contract between the naturalist and the government was actually at Gay's initiative. Already a naturalist, he had come to Chile because, while working as a professor in Santiago, he could spend his free time exploring and mapping the nearby region. He sought outside funding for his personal interests because the colegio, barely able to pay the costs of his local trips, would not be able to help him travel further afield. When he wrote to the government, Gay already viewed his project as one of mapping and collecting throughout the nation; he wrote that he had finished explorations around Santiago and did not want to abandon a work of genuine value. Gay suggested that, if the government were to contract him for further explorations, the resulting texts - to be published in Europe - would address natural history, geology, physical and descriptive geography and statistics of the nation. In addition, he would create a cabinet of curiosities, paying particularly attention to Chile's flora and minerals. He wrote that he did not want a large salary, but only his costs and the protection of local authorities. He would leave his library (400 volumes) as collateral while he explored and mapped territory which Chile claimed as its own. Gay's offer could not have come at a better time, because the government perceived European explorations in the south as a territorial threat which needed to be countered with its own scientific expedition. After three years of explorations, Gay gathered, for display in this 'cabinet of curiosities', plants, animals, mineral samples and evidence of indigenous material culture. Upon his return to France in 1842, Gay began work on his 24 volume and 2 atlas Historia Física y Política de Chile.
The lithographs in the atlas, depicting not only Chilean fauna but landscapes, social activities, celebrations and indigenous customs, have become part of the national iconography and have been widely studied, disseminated and copied.
Gay's return to France not only stripped the museum of much of its collection - he appeared to have taken the best materials with him - but also of its interested curator. When Gay went back to France the museum was left in the hands of curators Francisco García Huidobro, then Andres Antonio de Gorbea, Francisco de Borja Solar and finally Philibert Germain, as interim curator. Accounts of the museum concur that the collection fell into dusty decay until the appointment of Rodolfo Amando Philippi as curator (1853-1897).
Through Philippi's work, the Museo Nacional became the leading institution of natural history research in Chile and the nation's most important museum. A German immigrant himself, RA Philippi sought to make the collection more 'Chilean', but as we will see below he was inconsistent in terms of what he welcomed and what he did not in an institution that became his personal domain. The men who cooperated with Philippi's task were often foreigners, as well. Philippi hired men from overseas to work in the museum, not because he did not want to contract Chileans, but because he found that there were few Chileans with the training he sought. Even among his students at the Instituto Nacional and the University, where he taught botany and natural history, there were no students of sufficient dedication to undertake the tedious task of classification which was at the heart of the museum's work. Lack of interest in classification was not because Philippi ignored the subject as a teacher, quite the contrary. Philippi's students, the same ones who he said did not have the stamina to work at the museum, were not passed on their course without having gathered, ordered and classified at least 500 specimens of plants. Moreover, Philippi took students on field trips each Sundays to recognise and collect plants prevalent in the local environment, which would be classified later. While his other students many not have become great classifiers, his best student, his son Federico, became his constant collaborator and curator from 1897 until 1910, on his father's retirement. The predominance of foreigners at the museum surely influenced the work taking place inside. Ties with Europe, particularly Germany, were evident throughout the tenures of RA and Federico Philippi at the Museo Nacional. At various points, the museum had employees from France, Britain and Germany, as well as Chile. When working with his son, RA Philippi must have spoken German. Moreover, some of the research work the museum sponsored and the Philippis published were written in German, and only afterwards translated into Spanish. Even some of RA Philippi's books - although funded by the Chilean government - were published in Germany and shipped to Chile for distribution. These links with Europe were also to prove essential in the development of the museum's collection and library. Philippi saw himself and his museum as part of a community of researchers which exchanged materials and publications for mutual benefit; his ties to other institutions kept him abreast of the latest research around the world while enriching the collection at home. Inventing a Collection
When RA Philippi was appointed curator, the museum had been housed in one cramped room in the city centre. As its collection grew, so too did the need for space. In 1876, the museum was moved from rooms in the centre to its current location, a 'palace' in the Quinta Normal de Agricultura, which had been constructed for the 1875 International Exhibition in Santiago.
Some of the exhibition material was afterwards donated to the museum, thus incorporated into the expanding collection which grew through purchase, exchange, collecting trips and conquest. Philippi's interests were principally in samples of flora, fauna, minerals and archaeological material. In this new building, he finally had the space to develop and display the collection.
RA Philippi was determined to have the best, most complete collection of Chilean pre-historic artifacts possible, and it appears that each time a worthy collection was offered for sale he brought the matter to the attention of the Minister of Public Instruction. In detailing the importance of each collection, he would select a few remarkable pieces, explaining their value to the uninitiated minister (Philippi himself out-lasted scores of ministers). Although Philippi had professionalised the museum, particularly in its respectable new home, its previous incarnation, as a 'cabinet of curiosities', continued to haunt him, as was evident in the collecting practices of the Museo Nacional, particularly when purchasing items related to indigenous or other exotic cultures. [show image] Lip adornments, part of a collection he wanted, would have had a sensual exoticism, because they would never beautify women from civilized countries. (Philippi, 28 Sept. 1886) In other cases it was the rarity of the item or the value of its material which made it worthy of purchase. When a collection of gold archaeological artifacts came up for sale, RA Philippi immediately asked to purchase it: in the Museo Nacional, he wanted to bring together as complete a collection as possible of the objects of domestic industry [of the indigenous], filling the great hole that historians have left regarding this aspect [of indigenous culture].Yet the 'scientific value' of these items was based on the fact that gold was rare, and the museum itself had few gold objects. (Philippi, 14 April 1887) RA Philippi appeared to have gold fever which, as Cortes told the Aztecs, had only one cure. A display of gold objects would not only demonstrate the wealth of the culture that produced them but also the wealth of the nation that could afford the collection: this purchase was the Museo Nacional's version of conspicuous consumption. More mundane items, which could be easily found during collecting trips, became currency for exchange with European museums, increasing the collections of each museum involved. Philippi was often called upon to instruct naturalists accompanying outside expeditions on what to bring back, as discussed below, and he always ordered them to gather extra materials for storage in the Museo Nacional. Frequently, Philippi notified the Minister of Public Instruction that he had prepared a box of exchange items, such as plaster moulds or animal skins, to be sent (without cost) to Argentina, Europe or even New Zealand, for the use of museums and knowledgeable scientists there. Philippi donated left-over material to other institutions in Chile, like the natural history museum in Valparaíso and some secondary schools, but foreign museums received first priority because of exchange potential. As the museum's curator, RA Philippi arranged for members of the museum staff to study Chile's natural environment and bring back souvenirs for science. Although already 45 when he was appointed curator, Philippi undertook numerous collecting trips on his own and with his son, which was in fact a rather sore point with him. Although he appeared to enjoy the collecting, his time was already over-stretched and he complained that 'in various museums, there are special employees charged with collecting items, for example in the Argentine Republic'. (Philippi 1914: 29) Any mention of Argentina was a strategic comparison designed to provoke action through national rivalry. Nonetheless, the Museo Nacional did not have any one employee responsible for collecting, and as such Philippi himself, as well as the other employees, made these journeys, principally during vacations. The last collecting trip Philippi mentions he undertook was in 1893, when he was 85 years old. The list of trips undertaken for the museum is extensive and, by 1901, Maule was the only province of Chile which had not been visited by an employee of the National Museum. While gathering trips were organized with an eye to balancing the museum's collection, serendipity, too, had its place. The emergence of unexpected natural phenomena could prompt gathering trips: in 1885, RA Philippi requested funds for a trip to the Atacama Desert, which that spring had experienced unusual rainfall and was blanketed with rare flowers. Philippi found out about the desert in bloom not only because the newspapers he read carried the story, but also because the province's governor had sent him a telegram requesting that Federico come collecting. When RA Philippi received permission to send his son to collect samples of these 'badly-known' plants (Philippi 11 Sept. 1885), Amando 2do Philippi, probably Federico's son, also went along. The report which Federico Philippi wrote details - day by day - the towns visited, the activities of each member of the expedition and any help received from local political officials. It also includes the frequent use of the verb herborizar - to collect plants - the action word describing scientific travellers' most frequent activity.
The Atacama Desert was important to Chile from a geopolitical, strategic and economic point of view. In fact, the first expedition RA Philippi undertook for the Chilean government was to the 'at that time eternally unknown' Atacama Desert. (Philippi Boletín 1914: 24) When Philippi was contracted in 1854, Chile and Bolivia, recognising the desert as a vast economic resource, had disputed possession of the territory. Considering the uncertain political situation of the region, any 'scientific' trip to the Atacama Desert was fraught with international political implications. Looking back, Philippi remembered that, while the trip had been exhausting and the group had suffered from depravation, the results had been 'very satisfactory'. He brought back important materials for the museum's collection and, from his journey, the Chilean government was able to publish 'a detailed description... accompanied by maps, 12 landscapes and 15 engravings of plants and animals'.
Certainly, Philippi was aware of the geopolitical implications of naturalists' wanderings, as well as their value in increasing national prestige, and he used this knowledge to persuade a sometimes reluctant government to fund his expeditions. After Chile had won the Atacama Desert in a war with Peru and Bolivia, Philippi wrote to the Minister of Public Instruction that he wanted to explore the newly-acquired northern provinces. To convince an apparently reluctant minister, Philippi played on nationalist pride, reminding him that Chile used to lead the field of South American natural history, ahead of neighbours and competitors Peru, the Brazilian Empire and Argentina. But these competitors were catching up and Philippi speculated that Chile 'would remain behind' if the government did not 'take an interest in the animals, plants, geologic formation, etc. of its new provinces'. (Philippi, 30 May 1884) To maintain its lead in scientific research, the government had to continue to sponsor expeditions on the scale of Gay's. While the museum sponsored its own trips, military expeditions sent back items and also brought naturalists along to collect their own material. In 1886, RA Philippi wrote the Minister of Public Instruction with guidelines for the naturalist on an army expedition to western Patagonia. Philippi explained, in great detail, how the area was hilly and covered with unexplored bush vegetation. There was little variety of plants or animals and little hope that much could be collected. After this lengthy disclaimer about the material, even after raising doubts in this reader's mind about the necessity of a naturalist for the trip, Philippi concluded that 'nonetheless the naturalist will always collect something and will make observations that are much more interesting, seeing that these regions have never been explored!' (RA Philippi 18 Nov. 1886) The comment is telling in two ways: first, Philippi reveals that the 'eyes' of the naturalist are valuable regardless of the material collected. The naturalist only needs to look at the territory to do his work. Second, he assumes that these lands were somehow 'virgin', waiting to be explored, ignoring the fact that the mountains had been crisscrossed for thousands of years. Military expeditions, whether or not they included a naturalist from the Museo Nacional, did increase the holdings, and Philippi noted that the navy, especially captain Roberto Maldonado, had donated material from his exploration. (Philippi Boletín 1901: 32) Naturalists accompanied troops not only on expeditions but also when they were actively engaged in combat situations. For instance, during War of the Pacific (1879-1884) Philippi sent the museum's taxidermist collecting in Peru. Although the material brought back from this expedition was insufficient and of low quality, Philippi knew 'how great are the difficulties for a collector who accompanies an army to an enemy country [as] he can not go very far from the troops'. (Philippi Anales Aug. 1881: 320) In fact, looting Lima's collections resulted in more material than the collecting expeditions themselves. The looted collections consisted of books, animals, dried plants and mineral samples. While their origins were morally dubious, RA Philippi still looked on these items with a critical eye, concluding that 'the public library in Lima is very far from keeping up with advances in natural history: it lacked even the most important modern books, indispensable for the study of this science'. (Philippi Anales Nov. 1882: 509) While Philippi had no qualms about including looted material in his museum, these thefts from Lima's cultural institutions embittered Peruvians and fostered demands for revenge from future generations. Internal ContradictionNot content with acquiring items, Philippi spent years as curator removing or trying to remove exhibits which he did not believe belonged under the Museo Nacional's roof, yet his views of appropriate materials were not always consistent. While Philippi emphasized his commitment to a 'Chilean' collection in his writings, his use of the museum's budget suggests a broader project which went beyond representing Chile to foreign and local visitors, to include bringing the world to Chile and establishing the museum as a manufacturer of science internationally. I suggest that Philippi saw his work in Santiago and Chile as a chance to make a name for himself (which he did) in a far-off country where his background and training helped increase his prestige. He left the European 'centre' because of political unrest and stayed in Chile to build a career, proving that the 'periphery' was not just the supply side of natural history and could produce knowledge. The Museo Nacional served as a storehouse for all sorts of paraphernalia, both before and during RA Philippi's tenure as curator; nonetheless, he had a clear idea of what material was or was not appropriate for the national museum and tried to make the collection reflect his view. Upon taking up his post as curator, he began sending items to other institutions, to focus the museum's collection specifically on natural history. He sent examples of animals with extra appendages to the medical school - they had only been of interest to the ladies. He sent away flags taken from the Spanish at the Battle of Maipo and antiquated Spanish measures. The purges, and his desire to make the collection more scientific, were perfectly straightforward. The contradiction arises because Philippi also set out to make a complete collection of 'Chilean' materials in his science museum, while including items from far-flung regions of the globe. Even as Philippi purged items that were in his view unsuitable for the collection, many of the new additions to the collection appear equally unsuitable to the outside viewer. While it is not always clears which additions he solicited himself and which were imposed on him, there are enough cases in which Philippi was involved to indicate his contradictory thoughts, as well as the contradictions within the collection as a whole. In 1878 the 'Galeria de Antigüedades' was located on the museum's balcony. The stairs leading up to the balcony displayed company colours and flags taken from the Spanish during the wars for Independence, probably flag similar to those Philippi had sent away. The sword of Bernardo O'Higgins was displayed along with colonial items, such as a parasol used by the Peruvian viceroys. The parasol had been given as a trophy by San Martín to one of his generals; it had most recently been used in an 1856 independence celebration in Lima at which the parasol and a bottle of champagne were opened at the same time in a toast to Chile. An idol from Easter Island dominated the landing halfway up the stairs, inviting the visitor to continue climbing to the balcony level. Here the antiquities gallery included many mummies (dried out through exposure to desert extremes), the head of an indigenous person from New Zealand and the body of an indigenous man who, 'by his pose, appear[ed] to still feel the cold that cut the rope of his days'. (Guia del Museo... en 1878: 28) The collection also included skulls and copies of skulls from as far off as Africa and Asia and 'an Araucanian man and woman' in traditional dress, donated by Guillermo Manns. The list of preserved bodies makes striking reading, but compared to the displays at the Museo de la Plata in Argentina, Santiago's national museum lacked examples of human remains. Moreover, there are no indications that the Museo Nacional ever displayed live people, as was common during the nineteenth century, although several Fuegians were displayed only a few years earlier at Santiago's Colonial Exhibition in 1873. Besides independence artifacts and skulls, the antiquities collection, strong in remnants of Chile's indigenous cultures, also included a straw hat used by indigenous people in Venezuela, bits of a Roman mosaic, half-finger gloves used by indigenous people in Cuzco during the eighteenth century, a huge padlock from 1851, a blanket used by O'Higgins and Chinese and Japanese jugs. In short, the collection was a hodgepodge of curiosities, brought together through no obvious logic. When Philippi wrote his history of the museum, in 1901, he listed a collection of material with similar diversity of origin and object. The Peruvian mummies were still there, and were now accompanied by two Egyptian mummies, whose acquisition had been a great pleasure to Philippi. Both Chilean and Peruvian items were well represented, due to the purchases of important collections made over the years. The ethnographic material which the museum held included Polynesian arms and domestic utensils, some donated by the Chilean navy from its expeditions. The Easter Island collection was the best that Philippi knew of in any museum, including the giant lava idol which had not been moved from the staircase landing. The collection also included costumes from Constantinople, Syria and Dutch India, received through donation or exchange. In 1890, the museum had purchased a raft made from wolf hides, which had been an important form of transportation along the Peruvian and Chilean coasts. While the ethnographic collection was of 'modest extension', it had received the recognition of two 'distinguished' ethnographers from Europe. (Philippi Boletín 1914: 34-35) Thus we see that while Philippi had ostensibly set out to make the collection more 'Chilean', through purchase, exchange and donation, he brought relics from around the world to Chile. Moreover, the foreign items he brought to the museum represented the 'exotic', often colonial but never European, world. Enclosing the Natural WorldItems from the natural world displayed at the Museo Nacional served to reinforce the image found in Chilean promotional literature and in nationalistic rhetoric: a nation that was fertile, temperate and healthy. Displays of wood varieties demonstrated the usefulness of Chile's forests in offering materials for constructing progress. The bounty of medicinal plants coming from Chile provided evidence of the country's healthy climate and kind natural surroundings. Philippi emphasized the medicinal uses of plants in his classes, as well as in the museum. The only indication that Philippi may have shared the European view that the Americas were unhealthy, with flora and fauna inferior to old world varieties, is his comment on the Chilean puma, which was 'much shorter and weaker than the African lion. It is a coward and only attacks livestock'. (Guia del Museo... en 1878: 17) Nonetheless, I believe that in depicting the native lion as weak, Philippi was again demonstrating that Chile was a safe, healthy land, without the dangers of wild animals which haunted foreign imaginings of the new world. The guide includes a long list of collectors and trips necessary to build up the Museo Nacional's display of plants, again indicating the collaborative nature of the museum enterprise. Professional naturalists, military figures and interested dilettantes donated their samples to the museum, helping its collection of flora grow to 4000 species. In 1878, minerals and shells, both Chilean and imported, along with fossils, occupied one long wing of the museum, on the first floor. But RA Philippi, not satisfied with the mineral collection, noted in his 1901 history that it was strange that 'the mineral section of the museum is the least complete, and it would be a patriotic work, if the owners of mines wanted to remember that there is a National Museum' by donating minerals and rocks. (Philippi Boletín 1914: 33) Thus, without the collaboration of intersected private parties, the museum's display suffered. Nonetheless, the small displays of Chile's mineral wealth, no doubt labelled with their technical and common names and ordered in glass-covered cases, tamed the frontier inside Chile's boundaries. These displays in the Museo Nacional cleaned up not only the minerals, but also an economy based on mineral extraction. Visitors could marvel at the riches that had been detached from the grim realities faced by miners each day.
The vertebrate collection, a more significant part of the museum, underwent major changes while RA Philippi was curator. In 1878, it was almost entirely composed of skeletons assembled and displayed throughout the museum. The skeleton collection even included humans: one cabinet displayed the skeletons of 'our perfect and wise human species'. (Guia del Museo... de 1878: 17) By 1897, the collection had shifted away from skeletons and towards stuffed and preserved animals, perhaps made possible through advances in taxidermy techniques. One of the museum's first taxidermists, Luis Landbeck, an immigrant to the German colonies in the south, lost his sight due to constant work with arsenic, a compound essential in preservation work at that time. The 1897 museum guide began with a description of modern taxidermy techniques, discussing how the museum preserved its creatures. This lengthy discussion suggests not only the pride of the institution in its uses of modern technologies, but can also be explained by the fact that the museum's taxidermist wrote the guide in question. When most of the animals displayed were stuffed, the most important remaining skeleton was that of a whale, which had washed up on the shores of Valparaíso. Federico Albert, the guide's author, offered visitors a detailed description of the particular whale, but also what whales were - that they breathed air, yet lived in water. The museum's display truly included the marvellous when it could offer visitors this wonder of the deep.
The existence of these museum guides indicates some concern for public visits to the museum and the public's ability to understand the collection. Yet overall, the dissemination of scientific information to the wider public appears to have been of little importance to RA Philippi. While he used public access as an excuse for requesting extra financial support, in his regular correspondence and annual reports he rarely offered details of who attended the museum and why. The museum's goals were the creation of a complete collection of things Chilean, not public education, and it was not until 1911 that the institution clearly define its role vis-à-vis the public. In 1911, Eduardo Moore, the new curator, defined the museum as dedicated to preserving samples of the fauna, flora and soil of Chile and abroad, showing to the public two times a week, Thursday and Sunday in the afternoon. It serves the teaching of students from schools and the scientific investigation of those who dedicate themselves to science [sic]. Additionally, free consultations are given to industrialists who go to ask for information, above all in the Geology Section. (Moore Boletín 1911: 207-8)
Even when public viewing was among the priorities of the museum, it was only open twice a week, still suggesting that public dissemination of information was a lower priority than scientific research. Knowing that the public was little considered at the Museo Nacional, we can still glean some information about the visitors. In the museum's various locations in the city centre, visitors had included students who went to do research and the curious, who were drawn to the animal and human oddities on display. RA Philippi remarked disparagingly about the interest that women visitors had in these curios. When the museum moved to the Quinta Normal, the curious continued to attend but numbers fell among those who used the collection as an intellectual resource. Philippi blamed the attendance drop on the distance from the centre and the cost, in terms of time and money, of making the journey. Eventually, attendance began to climb again and by 1883, attendance numbers were again pleasing to Philippi. On one holiday, 2,000 people visited the museum, while on a regular Thursday the number was 900. At this point, the museum was only open on Thursday and holidays and Philippi, in response to complaints from 'working people', noted that the museum should be open on Sunday, too. The following year, the museum added Sunday afternoons to its regular open times. In 1887, the opening hours were increased substantially, to Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday from noon until six in the afternoon. The change in hours was decreed by the Minister of Public Instruction, but it is not clear who actually pushed for their expansion. Still we know that by 1911, the hours had been reduced as the museum was only open two days a week, even when if one of its stated roles was public display. ConclusionShort public hours and lack of surviving information about visitors to the museum demonstrate that the institution itself was principally engaged in the manufacture of scientific knowledge and the dissemination of this knowledge to a select group of educated professionals around the world. While the Museo Nacional was clearly the result of Philippi's half a lifetime of service, examination of the collection built also makes clear that the creation of natural history took place as a collaborative enterprise, which required donations from interested individuals and exchanges with museums and scientists all over the world. The museum, simultaneously isolated from the general public and linked to like institutions internationally, became an important means to prove Chile's status as a modern, progressive, scientific nation on the trajectory leading towards a European future. The existence of the museum, and its mythologised origins in the beginning of Chile's life as a nation, demonstrated that Chile belonged among the leading nations of the world, whose leaders were enlightened enough to realize the value of science. The national collection, gathered by Chileans and foreigners as they explored the national territory, served as a unifying force which bolstered the image of a united Chile, diverse while still one. At the same time, the work that went on in the museum created scientific knowledge in and for Chile, at a time when Europeans viewed the Americas as object for research, rather than narrator in scientific history.
BibliographyPrimary Sources (archival): Published Sources |
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