Under the sign

Under the Sign: John Bargrave as Collector, Traveler, and Witness is a cultural history that combines some of the most vital questions in the history of art, the history of science, intellectual history, and the new discipline of museology. The "Cabinet of Curiosities," an early modern phenomenon some historians view as the forerunner of the modern museum, has evinced considerable interest in recent years. Increasing attention has also been paid to the history of travel and its documentation. The collector John Bargrave (1610-80) holds a unique position at the intersection of these two areas of cultural practice, yet this is the first in-depth study of his life, and it is the first to assess his significance for contemporary cultural studies. Stephen Bann seeks not only to investigate the life and philosophy of an individual collector but to elaborate a genealogy of collecting that sheds new insights on the practice in its variable historical forms. John Bargrave's collection of "curiosities" remains nearly intact at Canterbury Cathedral, where it was recently rescued from virtual oblivion. His role as a traveler and his part in writing the first English guidebook to Italy have also come to light only in the last decade. Bann offers an investigation of Bargrave's family background, his social position in the period preceding the English Civil War, and his roles as traveler and collector during and after the war. Bargrave left a unique catalog detailing the circumstances of acquiring many of the objects, which Bann analyzes in order to reconstruct the methods and motives of collecting and establishing a permanent display. He argues that collecting can be seen as a form of authorship, an effort always rooted in a particular time and place (and the early modern period is crucial in this cultural shift) to make sense of objects symbolically.