Kate Hill 
Museums and Biographies 
Stories, Objects, Identities

Essays exploring the relationship between museums and biographies, with worldwide examples and from the early nineteenth century to the present day.


Museums and biographies both tell the stories of lives. This innovative collection examines for the first time biography – of individuals, objects and institutions – in relationship to the museum, casting new light on the many facets of museum history and theory, from the lives of prominent curators, to the context of museums of biography and autobiography. Separate sections cover individual biography and museum history, problematising individual biographies, institutional biographies, object biographies, and museums as biographies/autobiographies.

These articles offer new ways of thinking about museums and museum history, exploring how biography in and of the museum enrichesmuseum stories by stressing the inter-related nature of lives of people, objects and institutions as part of a dense web of relationships. Through their widely ranging research, the contributors demonstrate the value of thinkingabout the stories told in and by museums, and the relationships which make up museums; and suggest new ways of undertaking and understanding museum biographies.


Dr Kate Hill is Principal Lecturer in History at the University of Lincoln.


Contributors: Jeffrey Abt, Felicity Bodenstein, Alison Booth, Stuart Burch, Lucie Carreau, Elizabeth Crooke, Steffi de Jong, Mark Elliott, Sophie Forgan, Mariana Françozo, Laura Gray, Kate Hill, Suzanne Mac Leod, Wallis Miller, Belinda Nemec, Donald Preziosi, Helen Rees Leahy, Linda Sandino, Julie Sheldon, Alexandra Stara, Louise Tythacott, Chris Whitehead, Anne Whitelaw

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Introduction: Museums and Biographies – telling stories about people, things and relationships – Kate Hill

A Show of Generosity: Donations and the intimacy of display in the ‘Cabinet des médailles et antiques’ in Paris from 1830 to 1930 – Felicity Bodenstein

Introducing Mr Moderna Museet: Pontus Hultén and Sweden’s Museum of Modern Art – Stuart Burch

Sydney Pavière and the Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston – Laura Gray

‘His Best Successor’: Lady Eastlake and the National Gallery – Julie Sheldon

Women, Museums and the Problem of Biography – Anne Whitelaw

A Curatocracy: Who and What is a V&A Curator? – Linda Sandino

Significant Lives: telling stories of museum architecture – Suzanne Mac Leod

Schinkel’s Museums: Collecting and displaying architecture in Berlin, 1844-1933 – Wallis Miller

Personifying the Museum: Incorporation and Biography in American Museum History – Jeffrey Abt

Making an Exhibition of Ourselves – Helen Rees Leahy

Institutional autobiography and the architecture of the art museum: restoration and remembering at the National Gallery in the 1980s – Chris Whitehead

Classifying China: shifting interpretations of Buddhist bronzes in Liverpool Museum, 1867-1997 – Louise Tythacott

‘Dressed like an Amazon’: the transatlantic trajectory of a red feather coat – Mariana Francozo

Individual, collective and institutional biographies: The Beasley collection of Pacific artefacts – Lucie Carreau

Sculptural biographies in an anthropological collection: Mrs Milward’s Indian ‘types’ – Mark Elliott

Houses and Things: Literary House Museums as Collective Biography – Alison Booth

‘Keepers of the Flame’: biography, science and personality in the museum – Sophie Forgan

National History as Biography: Alexandre Lenoir’s Museum of French Monuments – Alexandra Stara

Autobiographical museums – Belinda Nemec

Who is History? The use of autobiographical accounts in history museums – Steffi De Jong

Community biographies: character, rationale and significance – Elizabeth Crooke

Endpiece: The Homunculus and the Pantograph, or, Narcissus at the Met – Donald Preziosi