German Ideas and Practice in American Natural History Museums

Abstract

In the nineteenth century, sometimes dubbed the “century of science,” formal learned institutions in Europe and throughout its imperial systems consolidated activity in the natural sciences. Research previously done by individuals and through informal correspondence now became concentrated in major urban museums administered by voluntary societies and state governments. Although museums were by no means new - the Greek muses resided in such facilities - they took on distinctive and expanded dimensions in the period of exploration and colonial expansion. Natural history museums became the principal agencies for research in the natural sciences. Created to serve primarily local and national constituencies, these major museums were nonetheless deeply engaged in international communication and exchange. Their collective agenda in the nineteenth century was to catalog all specimens in the natural world, and increasingly, their intention was to find the historical and dynamic (environmental or ecological) relationship among them. During the “golden age of museum building in the nineteenth century, these facilities were viewed in a number of ways - as temples to science, facilities for preservation and research, cultural centers demonstrating urbane sophistication, and, increasingly over the century, as instruments for education. The definitions of museum education were provided in generaland often rhetorical terms, following a presumption that visitors were responsible for their own learning. Early in the nineteenth century, museum proprietors claimed only that their displays could stimulate “rational amusement.” Exhibits of abnormal specimens or shelves arrayed with minerals, stuffed birds, pinned insects, and shells, institutions at midcentury paid relatively less attention to broad public needs than to preservation and publication.