The lost Museum

The year 1822 saw the opening of not one but two museums in the Mauritshuis. On the upper floor was the Royal Cabinet of Paintings. On the ground floor, over 10,000 objects from all over the world were exhibited in what was called the Royal Cabinet of Rarities. In 1883 the latter was removed from the building and its collection split up between the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and the precursor of the Wereldmuseum in Leiden. The huge diversity of subject matter in the essays in this book captures the eclectic nature of the Cabinet: from an intriguing ivory Chinese puzzle ball to the formation of cultural stereotypes, from a two-metre-long model of Deshima to a hat that turns out not to have belonged to William of Orange after all. And was the Inuk in his kayak really a stuffed human being – or just a dummy? In 30 essays, experts discuss the Royal Cabinet of Rarities from a dizzying range of perspectives. Despite this diversity, certain recurrent themes stand out, such as nationalistic propaganda and myth-formation, a deeply embedded colonial Zeitgeist, and the effect of the skewed balance of power in international relations on the Cabinet’s collection.