Aula, Museos y Colecciones

Presentamos una descripción e inventario somero sobre antiguas colecciones marinas de carácter científico y técnico en Madrid, excluyendo las docentes y las relacionadas con la navegación. Se ha avanzado en el conocimiento de los más destacados vertebrados marinos existentes en el Real Gabinete (identificación y cuantificación de especies a través de las estampas editadas hasta 1788). Desde el siglo XVIII se exhibieron públicamente numerosas preparaciones de ejemplares zoológicos marinos de todos los tamaños (desde voluminosos esqueletos de cetáceos hasta diminutos invertebrados) en diferentes ubicaciones estables en la capital (Real Gabinete de Historia Natural, Museo de la Comisión Permanente de Pesca, Museo de Ultramar y Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales) y en exposiciones multitudinarias abiertas al público, como la dedicada en el Real Jardín Botánico a la Comisión Científica enviada al Pacífico (1866) y la organizada en el parque de El Retiro dos decenios después para mostrar variopintas colecciones procedentes de las exóticas posesiones insulares españolas en las Filipinas, Marianas y Carolinas (1887). Mientras que ricas colecciones permanentes de fauna submarina (“peces, crustáceos, moluscos y zoofitos”) de Cuba y Puerto Rico se custodiaban en el citado Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, tal como describen los catálogos-guías publicados por José María Solano y José Gogorza en 1871 y 1891.

A description and brief inventory on old marine collections of scientific and technical character in Madrid, excluding educational and the related ones to navigation, are presented herein. Since the eighteenth century numerous preparations of marine zoological specimens of all sizes (from voluminous skeletons of cetaceans to tiny invertebrates) were exhibit at different stable locations in were exhibited in Madrid (Real Gabinete de Historia Natural, Museo de la Comisión Permanente de Pesca, Museo de Ultramar and Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales), as well through multitudinal exhibitions opened to the great public, such as the one dedicated to the Comisión Científica al Pacífico (1866) at the Real Jardín Botánico and the one organized at the ‘El Retiro’ Park two decades later to show motley collections coming from some exotic Spanish possessions in the Philippines, Marianas and Carolinas Islands (1887, Exposición de Filipinas). Whereas rich permanent collections of submarine fauna (“fishes, crustaceans, mollusks and zoofits”) from Cuba and Puerto Rico were guarded at the mentioned Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, as were describeb on the guidebooks published by Jose Maria Solano and José Gogorza in 1871 and 1891 respectively.

The considerable distance from Madrid to the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts has not prevented, since the eighteenth century, that manifold collections of marine zoology “for public instruction” have stayed at different museums of the city. We have made great efforts to advance in the knowledge of the most outstanding existing marine vertebrates at the Real Gabinete (identification and quantification of species through the plates published until 1788). The scarcity of complete inventories for most of the varied investigated marine public collections forces to try an approach to the original content of the different institutions through indirect and partial descriptive sources, as we have used in this work. Thus, we have located six different museums with marine zoological specimens, between 1776 and 1893, and offered a panoramic vision of the temporary evolution of several collections, integrating the results of the recent thematic inventories by other authors (these mainly of marine invertebrates).