Curators and Culture: The Museum Movement in America, 1740–1870 by Joel J. Orosz

Abstract

412 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Curators and Culture: The Museum Movement in America, 1740—1870. By Joel J. Orosz. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1990. Pp. xii + 304; notes, bibliography, index. $34.95. With Curators and Culture, Joel Orosz offers a refreshing study ofthe history of museums in America before 1870. Noting that historians have heretofore belabored their treatment of early museums with either a democratic criticism that labels institutions as elitist enclaves or a professional criticism that holds that early museums were simply repositories for fantastic objects with little educational value, Orosz sets out to prove that neither criticism rings true. He argues that between 1740 and 1870 an informal museum movement existed in America which possessed real educational value and exhibited strong tenden­ cies toward serious scholarship. These two aspects of early museums, popular education and professionalism, were in perpetual contention with one another until the “American Compromise” that took place between 1850 and 1870 brought them together in rough parity and formed the model for museum organization down to the present. Orosz believes that the democratic and professional criticisms have predominated for so long because “museum historians have made the striking assumption that museums have developed independently from American culture” (p. 254). He argues that the museums that existed before 1870 reflected broader social, political, and economic developments. In order to explore his thesis, Orosz examines eleven early institutions, including the Peale Museum, the Western Museum ofCincinnati, and the Smithsonian Institution. He divides the 130-year span of his narrative into six periods and discusses the predominating cultural imperatives of the period and their effect on each museum. During the colonial period the European curio cabinet was trans­ ferred to America. During the Moderate Enlightenment, between 1780 and 1800, the optimistic ideals of the British Enlightenment influenced museum proprietors to use their institutions to suppress vice “by means of rational amusement and pleasurable instruction” (p. 7). During the Didactic Enlightenment, from 1800 to 1820, optimism gave way to pessimism, and the privileged classes, fearing that the deferential mode of society was in decline, used museums as part of a movement to retain control over the masses. The Age of Egalitarianism, between 1820 and 1840, saw the rising middle classes establish control over museums as part of the reform movement that sought education for one and all. During the 1840s the Age of Professionalism witnessed a resurgence of elitism. The emphasis on popular education in the museums was replaced by a movement to make museums institutions for specialized research and learning. The final period discussed by Orosz is the American Compromise, which took place between 1850 and 1870. Curators and Culture contains a great deal of information that is of interest to historians of science and technology. Orosz carefully TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 413 traces the professionalization of the sciences as it affected, and was affected by, the establishment and growth of early museums. The professionalization of the sciences is central to Orosz’s argument as it becomes the barometer for understanding the tension between pop­ ular education and elite scholarship. The first museums after the revolution organized around a scientific theme to gain legitimacy as public institutions of education and announce the pride of a free nation. During the subsequent periods discussed, the sciences were used as bastions against the masses, or mediums to outreach to the public. Orosz’s vast use of primary sources and tireless discussion of individuals offer historians of science and technology a refreshing view of the shift from amateurism to professionalism in the sciences during the first half of the 19th century. Although the importance of the book is not diminished, Curators and Culture suffers from several lapses of analysis. Orosz’s periodiza­ tion is too simplistic and glosses over the subtleties of cultural change and the effects of that change on museums. His conclusion that by 1870 the form of the modern museum was in place seems precocious. As scholars such as Arthur Molella and Neil Harris have shown, the modern, cosmopolitan museum was far from complete in 1870. The conclusion is faulty because of Orosz’s preoccupation with the tension between popular education and scientific research. His own...