Museums in Britain Before 1884
Influential Victorian museums: extract from Museums of Influence
(p11)
... over the whole museum field, only three museums in the British Isles qualify for inclusion in [a list of museums which had a strong influence on museum development elsewhere] before the end of the reign of Queen Victoria. They were the Pitt-Rivers [sic] Museum at Farnham, the South Kensington Museum, or to give it its later title, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Natural History Museum. ... As this book defines it, a Museum of Influence is one which breaks new ground, and this the three museums above certainly did. In this respect, they had no serious rivals in their own country.
It could be argued, however, that the British achievement which had more influence on museums than any other single enterprise, was the Great Exhibition of 1851. ... Sir Henry Cole, who was closely involved in the organisation of the Exhibition, and who later went on to be the first Director at South Kensington, described the significance of the Great Exhibition in these terms:
The history of the world ... recalls no event comparable in its promotion of human industry with that of the Great Exhibition of the industry of all nations in 1851. A great people invited all civilised nations to a festival, to bring into comparison the works of human skill ... (Fifty years of Public Works of Sir Henry Cole ... Alan S. Cole [ed.] 1884 London)