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Review: Ships, Clocks & Stars: The Quest for Longitude
A review of the Ships, clocks and stars: the quest for longitude exhibition at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London.
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Review: The Return of Curiosity, by Nicholas Thomas
Review of The Return of Curiosity, by Nicholas Thomas
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‘Everything passes, except the past’: reviewing the renovated Royal Museum of Central Africa (RMCA)
This article describes the author’s impressions of the new Royal Museum of Central Africa gallery. It discusses the successes and failures of the project, as well as its implications for UK museums.
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Coming home - Bally’s miniature phrenological specimens
Close inspection of William Bally’s miniature phrenological specimens – a set of 60 small plaster busts – has led to a reappraisal of their origin and use. Made in 1832, they helped position Bally as ‘one of the best practical phrenologists in England’.
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Refrigerating India
Grounded in ethnographic research in India, this article examines the powerful change potential embedded in the refrigerator. It examines how the refrigerator’s time saving and food preserving potentials are eroding deeply anchored ideas about diet and health in India.
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'½ vol. not relevant': The scrapbook of Winifred Penn-Gaskell
Ephemera in collections of science and technology museums are often understudied and even less frequently displayed. This paper argues for a re-evaluation of the scrapbook of Winifred Penn-Gaskell as a key item in her collection of aeronautica.
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The Hugh Davies Collection: live electronic music and self-built electro-acoustic musical instruments, 1967–1975
The author describes and contextualises the Hugh Davies Collection (HDC) – a collection of self-built electro-acoustic musical instruments and other electronic sound apparatus formerly owned by the English experimental musician, instrument inventor, and live electronic music pioneer Hugh Davies (1943–2005).
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Prosthetic limbs on display: from maker to user
We reflect upon the way that prosthetic users have been represented in displays at the Royal College of Surgeons of England and National Museums Scotland. In particular, we assess how far user/patient voice balances clinical/technical narratives.
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Curating the collider: using place to engage museum visitors with particle physics
This article explores the use of reconstructed spaces and immersion at the Science Museum’s recent Collider exhibition. It sets out the challenges of engaging museum audiences with cutting-edge particle physics, describes the techniques adopted and evaluates their success.
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Making Material and Cultural Connections: the fluid meaning of ‘Living Electrically’ in Japan and Canada 1920–1960
This article explores how the process of aligning material and cultural ‘connections’ was crucial to defining different historical trajectories of domestic electrification in Canada and Japan. Detailing how connections were made and modified reveals the divergent and fluid meaning of living electrically across space and time.