Pub Date : 2017-01-02DOI: 10.1080/19369816.2017.1257871
M. Zytaruk
ABSTRACT The Library Company of Philadelphia, founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1731, is known to have held non-book objects. What has gone unnoticed is that the institution’s directors circulated those objects to Library Company members, thus extending the principles of the subscription library to non-book objects. By exploring the origins and early years of what was, in effect, America’s first circulating museum, this study argues that the Library Company’s non-book collection functioned as a means of facilitating self-improvement and social refinement for colonial Americans.
{"title":"America’s first circulating museum: The object collection of the library company of Philadelphia","authors":"M. Zytaruk","doi":"10.1080/19369816.2017.1257871","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19369816.2017.1257871","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The Library Company of Philadelphia, founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1731, is known to have held non-book objects. What has gone unnoticed is that the institution’s directors circulated those objects to Library Company members, thus extending the principles of the subscription library to non-book objects. By exploring the origins and early years of what was, in effect, America’s first circulating museum, this study argues that the Library Company’s non-book collection functioned as a means of facilitating self-improvement and social refinement for colonial Americans.","PeriodicalId":52057,"journal":{"name":"Museum History Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2017-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/19369816.2017.1257871","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48188516","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-01-02DOI: 10.1080/19369816.2017.1257847
Rebecca Soules
ABSTRACT In the last years of his life, eccentric art collector and New York politician Rush Hawkins laboured over the creation of a memorial museum to honour his late wife, a descendant of the Brown family of Rhode Island, and house the collection of art and incunabula that he spent a lifetime acquiring. Hawkins created an eclectic museum organised according to his personal collecting, with the graves of his wife and himself intended to anchor the collection in perpetuity. After his death, the Memorial became an out-dated relic of the past, poorly funded and without effective leadership. Absorbed by Brown University in the 1940s, parts of the Memorial’s collections have been dispersed to other university units and the building adapted for other uses.
{"title":"‘Nothing must be changed’: Rush Hawkins’ lost memorial museum","authors":"Rebecca Soules","doi":"10.1080/19369816.2017.1257847","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19369816.2017.1257847","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In the last years of his life, eccentric art collector and New York politician Rush Hawkins laboured over the creation of a memorial museum to honour his late wife, a descendant of the Brown family of Rhode Island, and house the collection of art and incunabula that he spent a lifetime acquiring. Hawkins created an eclectic museum organised according to his personal collecting, with the graves of his wife and himself intended to anchor the collection in perpetuity. After his death, the Memorial became an out-dated relic of the past, poorly funded and without effective leadership. Absorbed by Brown University in the 1940s, parts of the Memorial’s collections have been dispersed to other university units and the building adapted for other uses.","PeriodicalId":52057,"journal":{"name":"Museum History Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2017-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/19369816.2017.1257847","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43193172","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-01-02DOI: 10.1080/19369816.2016.1259330
Steven Lubar, Lukas Rieppel, Ann Daly, Kathrinne Duffy
ABSTRACT Museums are forever. At least that is what we’ve come to believe. In this introductory essay, we ask how that idea became part of the modern museum’s founding ideology, as well as the challenges it has faced both in practice and in theory. An overview of museum history finds that collections are often more mobile than is expected today, uncovering a range of arguments for more flexibility in their use and dispersal. The articles in the volume not only consider the many ways that museums and their collections can become lost, but also how they might be saved.
{"title":"Lost Museums","authors":"Steven Lubar, Lukas Rieppel, Ann Daly, Kathrinne Duffy","doi":"10.1080/19369816.2016.1259330","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19369816.2016.1259330","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Museums are forever. At least that is what we’ve come to believe. In this introductory essay, we ask how that idea became part of the modern museum’s founding ideology, as well as the challenges it has faced both in practice and in theory. An overview of museum history finds that collections are often more mobile than is expected today, uncovering a range of arguments for more flexibility in their use and dispersal. The articles in the volume not only consider the many ways that museums and their collections can become lost, but also how they might be saved.","PeriodicalId":52057,"journal":{"name":"Museum History Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2017-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/19369816.2016.1259330","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49111762","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-01-02DOI: 10.1080/19369816.2017.1264165
Courtney Fullilove
ABSTRACT To date historians have regarded the museum in the mid-nineteenth-century patent office building as a curious if not negligible precursor to the Smithsonian National Museum, which ultimately inherited its collections. This paper rejects this teleological interpretation by viewing the collections through the eyes of their progenitor and long-time custodian, John Varden, whose personal collections formed the kernel of the great cabinet. Varden’s personal collection of the hair of US presidents and distinguished persons, and its subsequent display and concealment, provides a heuristic to examine prevailing ideologies about the value of museum collections with respect to science and history. The displacement of curiosity by typicality and presentation by representation banished Victorian relic culture from the modern national museum’s displays.
{"title":"The hair of distinguished persons in the patent office building museum","authors":"Courtney Fullilove","doi":"10.1080/19369816.2017.1264165","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19369816.2017.1264165","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT To date historians have regarded the museum in the mid-nineteenth-century patent office building as a curious if not negligible precursor to the Smithsonian National Museum, which ultimately inherited its collections. This paper rejects this teleological interpretation by viewing the collections through the eyes of their progenitor and long-time custodian, John Varden, whose personal collections formed the kernel of the great cabinet. Varden’s personal collection of the hair of US presidents and distinguished persons, and its subsequent display and concealment, provides a heuristic to examine prevailing ideologies about the value of museum collections with respect to science and history. The displacement of curiosity by typicality and presentation by representation banished Victorian relic culture from the modern national museum’s displays.","PeriodicalId":52057,"journal":{"name":"Museum History Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2017-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/19369816.2017.1264165","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48902698","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-01-02DOI: 10.1080/19369816.2016.1257852
Amy Kohout
ABSTRACT This essay draws on correspondence between Smithsonian Institution curators and Edgar Alexander Mearns, an army surgeon who served in the Philippines during the first decade of the twentieth century, in order to explore ideas about loss in natural history collections. Beneath the appearance of abundance in these collections lies a constant concern with loss, not simply with the loss of specimens to spoil and slippage, but also with the loss of data and sometimes the loss of opportunities to acquire and describe new material. I explore the ways curators considered loss historically but also the ways that reconnecting natural history specimens and field books today offer possibilities for repairing some of these losses and more fully understanding the historical and cultural context of collection.
{"title":"More than birds: Loss and reconnection at the National Museum of Natural History","authors":"Amy Kohout","doi":"10.1080/19369816.2016.1257852","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19369816.2016.1257852","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This essay draws on correspondence between Smithsonian Institution curators and Edgar Alexander Mearns, an army surgeon who served in the Philippines during the first decade of the twentieth century, in order to explore ideas about loss in natural history collections. Beneath the appearance of abundance in these collections lies a constant concern with loss, not simply with the loss of specimens to spoil and slippage, but also with the loss of data and sometimes the loss of opportunities to acquire and describe new material. I explore the ways curators considered loss historically but also the ways that reconnecting natural history specimens and field books today offer possibilities for repairing some of these losses and more fully understanding the historical and cultural context of collection.","PeriodicalId":52057,"journal":{"name":"Museum History Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2017-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/19369816.2016.1257852","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41616618","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-01-02DOI: 10.1080/19369816.2016.1259378
Kathrinne Duffy
ABSTRACT The dismantling of the Jenks Museum of Natural History at Brown University illustrates a shift from charismatic to bureaucratic authority in museums and its implications for museum education. J.W.P. Jenks, the museum’s founder and curator, died in 1894. Without Jenks’s constant effort on behalf of the museum, his collection deteriorated. Reacting against cabinet displays like those of the Jenks Museum, progressive ‘museum men’ like Brown alumnus Hermon Carey Bumpus developed new, de-personalised approaches to specimen-based museum education, including exhibitions and detailed object labels. At the American Museum of Natural History, these modes routinised interpretation for large urban audiences. At the same time, staff members in bureaucratic museums became more interchangeable. As museums expanded according to corporate and bureaucratic principles, the personalised, idiosyncratic interactions offered by educators like Jenks gave way to more systematized experiences that did not depend upon particular individuals to function.
{"title":"The dead curator: Education and the rise of bureaucratic authority in natural history museums, 1870–1915","authors":"Kathrinne Duffy","doi":"10.1080/19369816.2016.1259378","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19369816.2016.1259378","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The dismantling of the Jenks Museum of Natural History at Brown University illustrates a shift from charismatic to bureaucratic authority in museums and its implications for museum education. J.W.P. Jenks, the museum’s founder and curator, died in 1894. Without Jenks’s constant effort on behalf of the museum, his collection deteriorated. Reacting against cabinet displays like those of the Jenks Museum, progressive ‘museum men’ like Brown alumnus Hermon Carey Bumpus developed new, de-personalised approaches to specimen-based museum education, including exhibitions and detailed object labels. At the American Museum of Natural History, these modes routinised interpretation for large urban audiences. At the same time, staff members in bureaucratic museums became more interchangeable. As museums expanded according to corporate and bureaucratic principles, the personalised, idiosyncratic interactions offered by educators like Jenks gave way to more systematized experiences that did not depend upon particular individuals to function.","PeriodicalId":52057,"journal":{"name":"Museum History Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2017-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/19369816.2016.1259378","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45033483","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2016-06-06DOI: 10.1080/19369816.2016.1183105
A. Bates, J. Woodhead
ABSTRACT In the mid nineteenth century there were several travelling collections of anatomical waxworks in England. Their stated aim was to educate the public, especially women, about health, particularly reproductive health, to which end their proprietors gave demonstrations, sold pamphlets, and in some cases practised medicine. Most large population centres on the railway network played host to a museum and the total number of visitors is estimated at over a million. Despite a lack of complaints from the public, there was opposition from the magistrates which resulted in a series of prosecutions on charges of obscenity. Owing to their impermanence and their reputation as indecent exhibitions, these itinerant anatomy museums all but disappeared from cultural histories of nineteenth-century England. They were, however, sufficiently successful in engaging with audiences that they briefly challenged the monopoly that the medical profession — newly unified under the Medical Act — exercised over the study of anatomy.
{"title":"Anatomy on trial: Itinerant anatomy museums in mid nineteenth-century England","authors":"A. Bates, J. Woodhead","doi":"10.1080/19369816.2016.1183105","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19369816.2016.1183105","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In the mid nineteenth century there were several travelling collections of anatomical waxworks in England. Their stated aim was to educate the public, especially women, about health, particularly reproductive health, to which end their proprietors gave demonstrations, sold pamphlets, and in some cases practised medicine. Most large population centres on the railway network played host to a museum and the total number of visitors is estimated at over a million. Despite a lack of complaints from the public, there was opposition from the magistrates which resulted in a series of prosecutions on charges of obscenity. Owing to their impermanence and their reputation as indecent exhibitions, these itinerant anatomy museums all but disappeared from cultural histories of nineteenth-century England. They were, however, sufficiently successful in engaging with audiences that they briefly challenged the monopoly that the medical profession — newly unified under the Medical Act — exercised over the study of anatomy.","PeriodicalId":52057,"journal":{"name":"Museum History Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2016-06-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/19369816.2016.1183105","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"59941194","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2016-06-06DOI: 10.1080/19369816.2016.1183102
M. Mercer
ABSTRACT The Tower of London had a number of different and sometimes conflicting functions in the early nineteenth century. Among these its role as a museum underwent significant development during this period. Moves by the Ordnance Office to improve public access to its historic collections at the Tower as well as providing greater historical accuracy were clear reflections of a wider national trend. Attention has generally been focused on the developments to the historic collections in the New Horse Armoury; yet as this article demonstrates there were other aspects of the Ordnance Office collections at the Tower which were also undergoing noteworthy changes as a consequence of British diplomatic activity, overseas military successes, and continuing territorial expansion.
{"title":"Shaping the Ordnance Office Collections at the Tower of London: The impact of colonial expansion, diplomacy, and donation in the early nineteenth century","authors":"M. Mercer","doi":"10.1080/19369816.2016.1183102","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19369816.2016.1183102","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The Tower of London had a number of different and sometimes conflicting functions in the early nineteenth century. Among these its role as a museum underwent significant development during this period. Moves by the Ordnance Office to improve public access to its historic collections at the Tower as well as providing greater historical accuracy were clear reflections of a wider national trend. Attention has generally been focused on the developments to the historic collections in the New Horse Armoury; yet as this article demonstrates there were other aspects of the Ordnance Office collections at the Tower which were also undergoing noteworthy changes as a consequence of British diplomatic activity, overseas military successes, and continuing territorial expansion.","PeriodicalId":52057,"journal":{"name":"Museum History Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2016-06-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/19369816.2016.1183102","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"59940985","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2016-06-06DOI: 10.1080/19369816.2016.1183911
Maria de Lluc Serra, G. Alcalde
ABSTRACT This article examines the history of the museums of Catalonia after they were reopened during the first years of the Francoist dictatorship following the 1936–39 civil war. In order to understand this period it is necessary to analyze the role that the Servicio de Defensadel Patrimonio Artístico Nacional played in relation to museums and the impact this Francoist institution had on their administration. The post-war functioning of museums is also compared to the situation before the war and the changes undergone during the conflict. Additionally, attention is given to the activities that took place in the Catalonian museums during this time, as well as the composition of museum boards and the governmental institutions that were engaged in the museums' re-inauguration and management following 1939.
{"title":"Dictatorship and Museums: The museums of Catalonia (Spain) in the early years of the Franco dictatorship (1939–47)","authors":"Maria de Lluc Serra, G. Alcalde","doi":"10.1080/19369816.2016.1183911","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19369816.2016.1183911","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article examines the history of the museums of Catalonia after they were reopened during the first years of the Francoist dictatorship following the 1936–39 civil war. In order to understand this period it is necessary to analyze the role that the Servicio de Defensadel Patrimonio Artístico Nacional played in relation to museums and the impact this Francoist institution had on their administration. The post-war functioning of museums is also compared to the situation before the war and the changes undergone during the conflict. Additionally, attention is given to the activities that took place in the Catalonian museums during this time, as well as the composition of museum boards and the governmental institutions that were engaged in the museums' re-inauguration and management following 1939.","PeriodicalId":52057,"journal":{"name":"Museum History Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2016-06-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/19369816.2016.1183911","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"59941179","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2016-05-20DOI: 10.1080/19369816.2016.1183914
G. Beal
{"title":"LACMA So Far: Portrait of a Museum in the Making","authors":"G. Beal","doi":"10.1080/19369816.2016.1183914","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19369816.2016.1183914","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":52057,"journal":{"name":"Museum History Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2016-05-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/19369816.2016.1183914","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"59941303","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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