A diffuse scientific: the colonel and collectors practices in São Paulo in the late nineteenth century

Abstract

This article intends to examine the collecting practices of the private collection known as Museu Sertório, which became Museu Paulista's first main collection. For that, a brief biography of Colonel Joaquim Sertório, the owner of the Museum, will be presented, as well as aspects of the collections' organization, in order to reflect on Sertório's supposed dilettantism in scientific fields, since the museum was associated with an educational project of the period. A parallel between Museu Sertório and the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaelogy, of Oxford University, will also be made, in order to better understand its insertion in nineteenth-century São Paulo.