Essays exploring the relationship between museums and biographies, with worldwide examples and from the early nineteenth century to the present day.

Introduction: Museums and Biographies - telling stories about people, things and relationships - Kate Hill
A Show of Generosity: Donations and the intimacy of display in the 'Cabinet des médailles et antiques' in Paris from 1830 to 1930 - Felicity Bodenstein
Introducing Mr Moderna Museet: Pontus Hultén and Sweden's Museum of Modern Art - Stuart Burch
Sydney Pavière and the Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston - Laura Gray
'His Best Successor': Lady Eastlake and the National Gallery - Julie Sheldon
Women, Museums and the Problem of Biography - Anne Whitelaw
A Curatocracy: Who and What is a V&A Curator? - Linda Sandino
Significant Lives: telling stories of museum architecture - Suzanne MacLeod
Schinkel's Museums: Collecting and displaying architecture in Berlin, 1844-1933 - Wallis Miller
Personifying the Museum: Incorporation and Biography in American Museum History - Jeffrey Abt
Making an Exhibition of Ourselves - Helen Rees Leahy
Institutional autobiography and the architecture of the art museum: restoration and remembering at the National Gallery in the 1980s - Chris Whitehead
Classifying China: shifting interpretations of Buddhist bronzes in Liverpool Museum, 1867-1997 - Louise Tythacott
'Dressed like an Amazon': the transatlantic trajectory of a red feather coat - Mariana Francozo
Individual, collective and institutional biographies: The Beasley collection of Pacific artefacts - Lucie Carreau
Sculptural biographies in an anthropological collection: Mrs Milward's Indian 'types' - Mark Elliott
Houses and Things: Literary House Museums as Collective Biography - Alison Booth
'Keepers of the Flame': biography, science and personality in the museum - Sophie Forgan
National History as Biography: Alexandre Lenoir's Museum of French Monuments - Alexandra Stara
Autobiographical museums - Belinda Nemec
Who is History? The use of autobiographical accounts in history museums - Steffi De Jong
Community biographies: character, rationale and significance - Elizabeth Crooke
Endpiece: The Homunculus and the Pantograph, or, Narcissus at the Met - Donald Preziosi