Weltmuseum Wien

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The Weltmuseum Wien ? formerly the Museum of Ethnology ? houses comprehensive collections of ethnographic objects, historical photographs, and books on non-European civilisations, making it one of the leading ethnographic museums in the world. Its roots can be traced back to the year 1806, when the ?Imperial and Royal Ethnographic Collection? was established as part of the Imperial Natural History Cabinet after the partial acquisition of the ?Cook Collection?. The continuously growing collections were transferred to the anthropological-ethnographic department of the Court Museum of Natural History in 1876. The Museum of Ethnology was formally opened in the Corps de Logis, Neue Burg, in 1928. 0Its earliest ethnographic artefacts of the Weltmuseum Wien date back to the 16th century. Renaissance chambers of art and curiosities comprised highly popular exotic objects. The collection of Archduke Ferdinand II at Ambras Castle in Tirol contained numerous important ethnographic artefacts, among them pre-Columbian and colonial feather objects, treasures from Mexico, and examples of African-Portuguese ivory carving. In the course of the Napoleonic Wars, the Ambras Collection ended up in Vienna. Aside from the Ambras Collection and the almost 250 objects collected by James Cook (1728?1779) on his travels and acquired in London in 1806, the foundation of the Imperial and Royal Ethnographic Collection was laid with the collections brought back from the Austrian Brazil Expedition (1817?1836), first and foremost the objects collected by the naturalist Johann Natterer, and the collection assembled on the journey around the world of the Austrian frigate ?Novara? between 1857 and 1859.