The Peabody-Essex Museum (PEM) of Salem, Massachusetts is a treasure. Now, in Collecting the Globe, PEM Associate Curator and Tufts professor of Museum Studies George Schwartz regales us with the institution's roots as the East India Marine Society Museum. The book is not simply an origin story but a trip through time. Schwartz analyzes the “object-based epistemology” of the accumulation process and exhibitions from 1799 to 1867 when the museum was absorbed into the Peabody Academy of Science (17, 164). In an age of private collections, membership libraries, and spectacles produced by showmen like P.T. Barnum, the East India Marine Society Museum began as a more democratic “cabinet of curiosity” and evolved into a maritime and natural history museum.
The book is short but rich. Over five chapters, Schwartz covers the museum's beginnings, members’ goals, key collections from around the world, exhibition and display, and visitors’ reflections. The narrative is...