Civilizations before the advent of specialized academic knowledge and modern public museums often presented their accumulated learning through copious collections that amassed singular meaningful specimens in a display that mirrored in microcosm the complex reality of the universe.
CLA's collaborative explorations of the premodern era are so impressive that the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation announced a grant of more than $600,000 to create the initial structures for a newly integrated Consortium for the Study of the Premodern World (CSPW) at the University of Minnesota.
