Concepts such as "art collection" and "art cabinet" and "cabinet of curiosities" are strongly embedded in the scholarly discourse of the 19^th and 20^th centuries. They are based on the assumption that a form-based understanding of art has higher cultural value, that collections portray the "taste" and "passion" of their owners, and that art has no practical use. These terms were used in order to describe how objects were accumulated under very different cultural conditions long before the 18^th century.

This volume makes analogies with contemporary collections, institutions, and forms of knowledge in order to be able to explain the accumulation and presentation of objects since Greek antiquity.