A three-day symposium held at the Manchester Museum, organized by:
- Museums and Galleries History Group
- Society for the History of Natural History
- The University of Manchester:
***A group of papers has been published as a special issue of Museum and Society***
Programme and Abstracts (PDF, 198KB)
Selected Posters:
Merle Patchett and Kate Foster, University of Glasgow: Lively geographies of de (PDF, 1MB)
Mike Rutherford, Jeanne Robinson and Richard Sutcliffe, Glasgow Museums: Pick ' (PDF, 429KB)
Catarina Madruga: Presentation and Representation. The Diorama at the National History Museum (PDF, 112KB)
Cristina Espada Mateos and Johan Olausson: Portrain of Friedrich Welwitch. Making historical natural collections more accessible through digitisation (PDF, 1.7MB)
Sandra E. Murriello: A Century of Museographic Changes at a Natural History Museum in the South (1.2MB)
Mike Rutherford, Jeanne Robinson and Richard Sutcliffe, Glasgow Museums: No Glass! Natural history specimens on open display at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow (531KB)
Aims and scope:
The conference aimed to promote and communicate inter-disciplinary research on historical, theoretical and museological aspects of natural history museums. For whereas other museum sectors (such as ethnography museums) have been the subject of thriving body of reflexive literature, the collecting and display of natural objects has yet to be so thoroughly theorized. Bringing together a critical mass of scholarship engaged in research in this area, the conference began to develop a theoretical community concerned with 'natural museology'. Papers provided innovative methodological or reflexive insights and were based on original research.
Panel topics:
/media/humanities/schoolofartshistoriesandcultures/migration/artshistoriesandcultures/centreformuseology/newsevents/archiveofpastevents/naturebehindglassconference/styleimage,72156,en.jpgPapers and posters engaged with historical and/or current aspects of the following areas:
- taxidermy
- botany
- empire
- multi-media
- dioramas
- collecting
- international contexts
- re-assessing in the 20th century
- re-inventing in the 21st century
Key Papers:
- Professor Tony Bennett (Open University):
Nature sometimes makes no jumps, and sometimes it does: Museums of natural history and ethnology, governance, and evolutionary temporalities - Professor Peter Davis (University of Newcastle):
On the borders of natural history: geographical isolation and collection building in the nineteenth century - Dr Sophie Forgan (Teesside University):
Hero, muse or fossil? Reflections on the growth of the personality museum - Professor Simon Knell (University of Leicester):
Fossil people: studying research communities through their engagement with objects - Dr Bernadette Lynch (University of Manchester):
Amenable objects: cultural perspectives on natural history specimens - Professor John Pickstone (University of Manchester)
What is a natural about objects? Perspectives from the history of science - Dr Anne Secord (University of Cambridge):
Private collections and the public good: skill and desire in natural history
Programme panel:
Dr Sam Alberti (Manchester Museum / Centre for Museology); Dr Nick Merriman (Manchester Museum); Prof. Penny Harvey (Social Anthropology); Prof. Piotr Bienkowski (Manchester Museum); Dr Helen Rees Leahy (Centre for Museology); Louise Tythacott (Centre for Museology); Prof. Mick Worboys (CHSTM); Dr Joe Cain (University College London); Dr Chris Whitehead (University of Newcastle; Chair, MGHG); Prof. Arthur Lucas (President, SHNH); Gina Douglas (Linnean Society; Programme Secretary, SHNH).
For further details, contact:
Dr Sam Alberti, Manchester Museum, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, MANCHESTER M13 9PL, sam.alberti@manchester.ac.uk