Around 1800, Friedrich Wilhelm III. lavishly furnished the collection rooms in the Berlin Palace with objects, even though the baroque art chamber was already considered an outdated type of collection. Here, a reinterpretation of the art chamber emerged in the sense of a universally designed museum connected to a teaching or research institution, as had been realized in many places in the 18th century. Comparisons with the Fridericianum Museum in Kassel, the St. Petersburg Kunstkammer, the Art and Natural History Chamber of the Francke Foundations in Halle, and the Dresden Palais des Sciences highlight this development. In this way, the book traces a little-noticed tradition of universal academy museums that unfolded beyond the emerging specialized museum, which formed the starting point for developments in Berlin just before the founding of the Old Museum.