Curators are the keepers or custodians of a museum, library or other collection. The term is derived from the Latin curare, meaning to take care. Its linguistic history is intriguing, but the connotation of “guardianship” was maintained throughout.
In Ancient Rome, curatores were civil servants in charge of public works, overseeing the Empire’s aqueducts, bathhouses and sewers. From the early fifteenth century onward to the medieval period, the curatus was a parish priest devoted to the care (cura) of minors, “lunatics,” and other vulnerable people. During the 1660s, individuals charged with the care and preservation of precious collections of art, books and artifacts (initially at private estates) were referred to as curators.
Cabinet & Café
In Europe, the modern idea of a museum was preceded by the so-called “Cabinet of Curiosities.” Sixteenth century cabinets varied according to the interests of their owners: physicians collected anatomical specimens; merchants bought rarities from far-flung trading posts; artists gathered prints, drawings and casts of ancient sculpture.
By the turn of the seventeenth century collecting had become an obsession of the wealthy and well-connected who were hoarding large numbers of objects (“material culture” in modern parlance). Critical taxonomy was rarely in evidence. Such cabinets were not intended for a public audience as access was restricted to the educated few.
In 1695 James Salter, a former valet to Hans Sloane (“founder” of the British Museum in 1753), opened a barber shop at 18 Cheyne Walk in fashionable Chelsea. Soon after he turned the establishment into a resort which he named Don Saltero’s Coffee House.
In spite of the name’s Spanish connotation, the English owner was famous for his punch, he played the fiddle and – if requested – was able to shave or bleed his clients or draw their teeth. James was a Jack of all trades.
The attraction of Salter’s coffee house was his display of a splendid collection of curiosities and exotica. On show at the “museum” were a petrified crab from China; William the Conqueror’s flaming sword; Henry VIII’s assault jacket; medals of the seven Bishops who resisted James II’s “Declaration of Indulgence;” and last but not least: a hat that once belonged to the sister of Pontius Pilate’s wife’s chambermaid.
The exhibits were placed in glass cases at the front room where weapons and skeletons covered the walls and ceiling. The owner also supplied a printed Catalogue of the Rarities … at Don Saltero’s Coffee House to his customers (no less than forty-eight extant editions range from 1729 to 1795).
Salter’s “Chelsea Knackatory” became a meeting-place for notable scientists, writers and foreign visitors (including Benjamin Franklin in 1724). The coffee house was an intermediate stage between private cabinets and public museums.
Swiss Nomad
Painter and illustrator Pierre Eugene Du Simitière was born Pierre-Eugène du Cimetière in 1737 in Geneva. In 1757, he sailed from the port of Amsterdam to the Dutch colony of St Eustasius, an island in the West Indies, and would never to return to Europe. He may have been employed by (as a soldier?) the West India Company. He had also enjoyed some art training in Amsterdam.
For nearly a decade, he earned a precarious living by painting portraits of merchants and planters whilst traveling back and forth between the West Indies and North America. He collected samples of the fauna and flora he explored, gathered minerals, shells and fossils, and preserved insects and small creatures in alcohol.
He produced precise drawings and watercolor paintings of specimens and carefully described their habitats and peculiarities. His interest in natural history embraced geology, mineralogy and archeology. Recording the natural history of the Colonies, his interest soon widened to numismatics and objects of ethno-cultural value.
Du Simitière stayed periodically in various cities along the Atlantic Coast. Whilst lodging in Maiden Lane, Manhattan, he became a naturalized citizen in 1769. He improved his pictorial skills by drawing views of New York’s urban environment, making etchings of Newport, Rhode Island and other places.
In meticulous detail, he sketched the scenes before him in order to preserve an accurate record for future reference. From the outset, he was a curator at heart. Eventual engagement with the American struggle for independence was inevitable.
His concerns about the strained relationship with London fired his habit of collecting broadsides, pamphlets, handbills and newspapers that concerned the issues of the day. Du Simitière was the first to realize that documents relating to the struggle for freedom needed to be preserved for posterity. His socio-political engagement may have begun on Broadway.
Battle of Golden Hill
Du Simitière produced a unique engraving on the Liberty Pole riot, an icon of New York’s resistance to the British presence (the “pole” tradition began in 1766 with the repeal of the hated Stamp Act). Located close to nearby army barracks, it was a spot of political skirmishes between local activists and “redcoats.”
When British soldiers finally managed to destroy the pole in January 1770, they triumphantly piled up the pieces outside De la Montagnie’s Tavern on Broadway, a gathering place of the “Sons of Liberty.”
In response, a bloody confrontation erupted which lasted two days and was later named the “Battle of Golden Hill.” Shortly after, the Sons of Liberty bought a land lot even closer to the barracks for a huge new pole, some sixty-eight feet tall, drawn by six horses and escorted by a crowd of armed locals.
Embedded deep in the ground and bound with iron bars and hoops, this pole survived until British troops occupied Manhattan in the fall of 1776.
Having lived in the city of New York for nine years, Du Simitière moved to Philadelphia in 1772. Once settled, the political and cultural history of North America became his main topic of interest.
During the 1770s his focus of collecting acquired authority in the area of Native American settlements and their relations with Anglo-Americans.
He used his house and studio to store treasures that began to attract the attention of members of Congress, scientists and colleagues of the American Philosophical Society of which he was a member and curator. All the while, he struggled to survive financially.
He designed and drew maps, frontispieces and illustrations for publications. He produced pencil, chalk and water-color portraits of notables who came to Philadelphia (more often than not these sketches were added to the collection). In 1779 he started to draw from life a series of thirteen profile portraits of the leaders of the American Revolution.
General George Washington’s portrait bore a special likeness and was used in 1791 on the “Washington cent” coin, but his hope that sales would solve his money troubles was dashed by various pirated versions that circulated on the market. Poverty made him decide to follow the old European custom of setting up a “Curio Cabinet.”
American Museum
In September 1782 he advertised the foundation of the “American Museum.” Located in a house on Arch Street and formally opened to the public on April 17, 1782, he tried to spark interest by stressing the collections of New World curiosities, both natural and artificial.
He did not bother to mention his outstanding numismatic samples nor his trove of printed documents concerning the history of the Colonies and the events leading up to the American Revolution.
Du Simitière’s ambition to acquire current source materials saved precious documentary evidence from being lost for ever. In his museum, he supplemented printed or written documents with relevant historical objects such as seals, medals or prints. His contextual arrangements were in tune with the modern concept of a historical museum.
The venture was short-lived. Its founder was not given the time to produce a catalogue of holdings. The only extant documents that provide a description of exhibits are a broadside announcing the museum’s opening and the “for sale” list published after the owner’s death in 1784 to pay off outstanding debts.
The Library Company of Philadelphia (founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1731) secured virtually all the printed books, almanacs, pamphlets and newspapers, the most valuable and important purchase it ever made.
Buried in an unmarked grave in St Peter’s Churchyard at Fourth and Pine Street, Philadelphia, the names of Du Simitière and his American Museum were soon forgotten. And yet, he was a pioneer. His American Museum predated by several years the one founded by Charles Willson Peale in the same city which has traditionally been credited as the first of the Republic.
New York’s earliest recorded attempt came almost a decade later. On May 21, 1791, a notice appeared in the Daily Advertiser on behalf of the Society of Tammany, or Columbian Order, announcing the opening of one New York’s first public museums in the upper rooms of City Hall with the purpose of collecting everything relating to the nation’s foundation and create an “American Museum.” (The Albany Institute of History & Art also opened in 1791.)
In Europe, the transformation of private collections into public museums coincided with the rise of the nation state. The museum became a means of educating the public and promoting a sense of collective identity. Granting the public access to “national” collections of carefully arranged exhibits allowed the state to control the flow of information and shape the narrative.
The first European museums had maintained the “universal” interest that motivated early collectors and their cabinets. The attempt to create an institution that would tell the story of a nation’s foundation and history seems to have been an American undertaking.
The imposing national museums of Paris, London, Madrid or Amsterdam were preceded by the much more modest concept of an “American Museum.”
Clash of Mottos
Du Simitière‘s coin collection was sold at public auction by Matthew Clarkson & Ebenezer Hazard, on March 19, 1785, in Philadelphia. It was the first such coin auction sale in America.
A passionate collector, his expert knowledge made him America’s first numismatist. Added to his artistic ability, he was creatively involved in the art of heraldry, designing emblems, medals and seals.
In July 1776, almost immediately after signing the Declaration of Independence, Congress requested Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin to come up with a design for the nation’s seal and motto. Du Simitière was invited to act as a consultant.
He suggested the phrase “E Pluribus Unum” (From Many, One – unity in diversity) which, consisting of thirteen letters, was symbolic of the Thirteen Colonies that rebelled against British rule.
It would take several committees before in 1782 Congress approved the design of an American bald eagle clutching thirteen arrows in one talon and an olive branch in the other. As Congress was opposed to any theistic slogans, Du Simitière’s proposal was acknowledged as a de facto national motto.
Linking American identity with religion emerged during the Civil War. Pushed by Protestant denominations, a change to the preamble of the Constitution was proposed that would declare “Almighty God as the source of all authority and power in civil government.”
In the end, the amendment was never ratified. For many Americans, placing invocations of God in the Constitution contradicted the ideals of the Founding Fathers.
The 1950s witnessed a resurgence of religious pressure in politics. The decade brought the words “In God We Trust” into widespread use. In 1955, President Dwight Eisenhower signed a bill placing the phrase on all currency.
It was adopted as the official motto of the United States a year later, signaling opposition to secular Communism during the Cold War era. Religious conviction set America apart from the Soviet Union’s godlessness.
The motto did not and never has reflected universally shared values. When speaking at the University of Indonesia in 2010, President Barack Obama stated that America’s national motto was “E Pluribus Unum ,” indicating that hundreds of millions of citizens with different beliefs can be free under one flag (the statement caused uproar in certain circles, Mike Pence demanding a correction for that “misrepresentation”).
The relatively recent claim that America is a nation based in Christian faith, “In God We Trust” offers merely a partisan political and religious perspective (“a nation of believers” with a Faith Office in the White House). It is a divisive legacy of modern conservatism.
The current slogan “In Trump We Trust” has given a new twist to an ongoing debate that may well be consequential for the future of America’s political landscape.
Illustrations, from above: A woodcut of St. Dominic, founder of the Dominican Order and patron saint of astronomers and natural scientists; A page from “A catalogue of the rarities to be seen at Don Saltero’s coffee-house in Chelsea,” 1739; Charles MacKubin Lefferts’ “Battle of Golden Hill,” 1919-20 (New York Historical Society); The 1791 “Washington cent” coin with Du Simitière’s portrait design; The Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in His Gallery at Brussels by David Teniers the Younger (1610-1690) 1651 (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna); and the greater coat of arms of the United States of America.
Read more about museums in New York State.
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