In this article I critically examine the historical context of science education in a natural history museum and its relevance to using museum resources to teach science today. I begin with a discussion of the historical display of race and its relevance to my practice of using the Museum’s resources to teach science. I continue with a critical review of the history of the education department in a natural history museum to demonstrate the historical constitution of current practices of the education department. Using sociocultural constructs around identity formation and transformation, I
This paper presents the first study ever conducted on the profile of visitors to the Museum of Human Evolution of Burgos (Spain), which exhibits the finds of the Atapuerca archaeo-paleontological sites. The research was guided by the principles of public communication of science and the methodology of the studies on museum visitors. The analysis reveals a positive perception; the Museum is associated with the sites and they are valued as cultural heritage. Complaints are very limited but useful to produce a set of recommendations to further improve the exhibition. In addition, the findings are
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TEAM MEMBERS:
María Eugenia ConfortiMaría Gabriela ChaparroPamela DegeleJuan Carlos Díez Fernández-Lomana
Dinosaurs have been a very popular science topic since signs of their presence on earth were first discovered. They have represented so-called ‘edutainment’ for some people. Learning from informal sources and in- an out-of-school environment can be effective and motivating. In this study, 12-year-old pupils (N = 366) visited a dinosaur science centre exhibition in Finland. Pupils were tested with standardised tests of motivation as defined by self-determination theory, cognitive skills, and interest via pre-, post-, and delayed post-tests during a six-month period. Findings show that pupils
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Hannu SalmiHelena ThunebergMari-Pauliina Vainikainen
The status of photographs in museums is receiving increased attention. This is exemplified by the debate over the transfer of the Royal Photographic Society collection held at the SMG’s National Science and Media Museum to the V&A (see Terwey, this issue), and the implications for photographs of a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) focus at the National Science and Media Museum. So it seems to useful moment to think about the terms under which photographs exist in museums collections. What are they doing there?
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Elizabeth Edwards
resourceresearchProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
I received the invitation to deliver a paper as part of a panel about photography at the Science Museum Group’s [SMG] inaugural research conference towards the end of 2015. A few months later, SMG announced its plans to give a significant part of the photography collection held at the National Science and Media Museum – one of the four institutions for which the umbrella group is responsible – to the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. What has proved to be a controversial decision will see 400,000 objects, originally the collection of the Royal Photographic Society, and now categorised as
This article will consider the alignment of scientific and media practice at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Over several decades after 1817 certain instrument makers began to specialise in the domestic entertainment market, transferring skills from optical instrument manufacture to the design of fashionable novelty devices. The instrument trade was expanding into a new middle-class market to exploit an increasing popular trade in optical novelties, exemplified by the 1817 Kaleidoscope craze and new interest among the middle classes for microscopes, telescopes, and magic lanterns
This article examines the 1935 Science Museum temporary exhibition on Noise Abatement, situating it in the sound historical context of inter-war Britain, and making an argument that the ‘way of hearing’ it advanced was part of an attempt to shape auditory perception in the interests of a class-bound culture of acoustic civilization. Further, the article uses this exhibition to mount an argument that museum scholars should consider sound not simply as a medium of engagement, but also as a politically interested and socially active field.
In January 1885, the Glaswegian Professor of Chemistry Dr Robert Carter Moffat organised a special operatic concert at St James’s Hall, London, to which he invited around two thousand scientists and musicians. The point of this invitation concert was that all the singers used bottled air. Moffat himself appeared between the various performances, wielding his mysterious Ammoniaphone, or bottled-air machine, a long silver tube which he flourished in the faces of his audience while describing its virtues with considerable animation. The premise of the Ammoniaphone was that since Italian opera
How did industrial museums cross the Atlantic? When the first American museums of science and industry were created in the 1920s, they looked to Europe in order to import what was seen at that time as a burgeoning cultural institution. In this article, I look at this process of appropriation through an analysis of the changing perceptions of European industrial museums as expressed in the reports, surveys and books written by the curators, directors and trustees of the New York Museum of Science and Industry. I will pay particular attention to the 1927 film Museums of the New Age, documenting
This article concerns the conservation of historic doped fabric aeroplanes in the static museum setting of the Science Museum’s Flight gallery. It reviews historic sources, primarily archival and scientific research papers, to examine what doped fabric aeroplanes are made from, and why these materials were selected. It also discusses current conservation methods used for treating tears in the doped fabric covering of aeroplanes, and considers the ethical and practical limitations of these practices. An overview of the doped fabric aircraft collection currently held by the Science Museum is
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Ben RegelJannicke LangfeldtLouisa BurdenMary Ryan
Florence's La Specola Museum stirs up strong emotions. Among its collections, the valuable anatomical wax models created between the end of 17th and the beginning of 18th century stand out owing to their marvellous and provocative nature. The aim of this essay is to analyse the communication models epitomised by some of these works by means of historical semiotics, to nourish the widespread, but often underestimated assumption that science and the means used to spread it have always been influenced by intellectual suppositions and constantly interact with contemporary culture.
Flying Scotsman is arguably the world’s most famous steam locomotive. The engine, a standard bearer of British engineering excellence and modernity in the 1920s, became, in the 1960s, a symbol of the dying age of steam. As Britain’s post war austerity and increasingly lesser role in the world gave way to Harold Wilson’s modernising ‘white heat of technology’ Britain’s ‘cult of the past’ took greater hold. Wistful nostalgia for the past can be seen across the cultural landscape of the 1960s in books, poetry, music, television and film. With a marked increase in the rise and popularity of