Late nineteenth‐century public museums in the United States were intentionally built to be modern, guided by administrators like George Brown Goode toward scientific goals that included preservation, research, and education. Self‐consciously preoccupied with the management of museums, intent on attaining mastery over the objects that constituted their museums, and persuaded that meaning derived not just from the objects themselves but from their explanation and configuration by experts, museum masters led a “new museum” movement. A century later, the critiques of postmodern (...) scholars attest to the museum directors’ effective establishment of a modern profile. Historians of science, who once could take these institutions for granted as a lightly marked center of authority, now may use methods of social and cultural studies to open their institutional and intellectual frames. While cautious about theory‐driven arguments, such scholars benefit from the issues raised by cultural critics even as they rely on their own documentary methods to ensure that science is an integral component when examining ideas, language, and practice in context. (shrink)

Late nineteenth‐century public museums in the United States were intentionally built to be modern, guided by administrators like George Brown Goode toward scientific goals that included preservation, research, and education. Self‐consciously preoccupied with the management of museums, intent on attaining mastery over the objects that constituted their museums, and persuaded that meaning derived not just from the objects themselves but from their explanation and configuration by experts, museum masters led a “new museum” movement. A century later, the critiques of postmodern (...) scholars attest to the museum directors’ effective establishment of a modern profile. Historians of science, who once could take these institutions for granted as a lightly marked center of authority, now may use methods of social and cultural studies to open their institutional and intellectual frames. While cautious about theory‐driven arguments, such scholars benefit from the issues raised by cultural critics even as they rely on their own documentary methods to ensure that science is an integral component when examining ideas, language, and practice in context. (shrink)

This survey outlines a history of museums written through biographies of objects in their collections. First, the mechanics of the movement of things and the accompanying shifts in status are considered, from manufacture or growth through collecting and exchange to the museum. Objects gathered meanings through associations with people they encountered on their way to the collection, thus linking the history of museums to broader scientific and civic cultures. Next, the essay addresses the use of items once they joined a (...) collection, whether classificatory, analytical, or in display. By thus embedding the study of scientific practice in material culture, this approach contributes to constructivist histories of science. The final section addresses the role of objects in the experience of the visitors, emphasizing how fruitful the history of museum objects can be in the study of the public engagement with science. (shrink)

This survey outlines a history of museums written through biographies of objects in their collections. First, the mechanics of the movement of things and the accompanying shifts in status are considered, from manufacture or growth through collecting and exchange to the museum. Objects gathered meanings through associations with people they encountered on their way to the collection, thus linking the history of museums to broader scientific and civic cultures. Next, the essay addresses the use of items once they joined a (...) collection, whether classificatory, analytical, or in display. By thus embedding the study of scientific practice in material culture, this approach contributes to constructivist histories of science. The final section addresses the role of objects in the experience of the visitors, emphasizing how fruitful the history of museum objects can be in the study of the public engagement with science. (shrink)

My goals in this paper are twofold: to outline the refashioning of amateur and professional roles in life science in late Victorian Yorkshire, and to provide a revised historiography of the relationship between amateurs and professionals in this era. Some historical treatments of this relationship assume that amateurs were demoralized by the advances of laboratory science, and so ceased to contribute and were left behind by the autonomous "new biology." Despite this view, I show that many amateurs played a vital (...) part in the construction of a professional academic community in urban Yorkshire, and then continued to collaborate with the laboratory-based biologists. The key to any analysis of the relationship between amateurs and professionals is the great variety of amateur identities and practices in Victorian Yorkshire. The amateur-professional rift fallacy arose because laboratory biologists fashioned an identity in conscious opposition to a particular type of amateur: an ideal that belied an array of cooperative relationships. As naturalists refashioned their roles and identities in light of the changes within academe and without, debates about the practice and place of life science took place as often among amateurs as between professionals and amateurs. (shrink)