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Review: Science Museums in Transition: Cultures of Display in Nineteenth-Century Britain and America, edited by Carin Berkowitz and Bernard Lightman, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017
Book review
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On heroism
This article discusses the concept of ‘heroism’ in relation to science, medicine and technology. It unpicks the complexities of the concept and discusses its implications for historians of science and museum professionals.
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Contexts for photography collections at the National Media Museum
In 2016 the National Media Museum transferred parts of its photographic collections to the Victoria and Albert Museum. This article examines the reactions to this decision to understand what it can tell us about public perceptions of the role of museums, and places the transfer in the wider contexts of sustainable collecting practices, economic pressures and local circumstances.
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Thinking things through: reviving museum research
How can invigorating research be reseeded in science museums? I believe that their investigative agendas can be rejuvenated through a focus on material culture, approached as authentic, singular opportunities for heightened aesthetic delving, and this marshalled through a programmed range of experiences, intelligences and disciplines.
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Functionless
Displays of instruments in science museums are closer to those of decorative arts artefacts than to the presentation of real functional and practical objects. This article offers a critique and suggests a path forward to go beyond functionless objects.
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Information age? The challenges of displaying information and communication technologies
This article explores the challenges of displaying the history of information and communications in a museum environment, based on Information Age, the Science Museum’s new permanent gallery.
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Museums theme – Adventures in Museology: category building over a century, and the context for experiments in reinvigorating the Science Museum at the turn of the twenty-first century
Acting as an introduction to articles in this issue on a museums theme, this paper discusses the long-term history of science museums and the conjuncture of the late twentieth century which precipitated innovations in various science museums described in the collection.
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Museums theme – Quest for Absolute Zero: A Human Story about Rivalry and Cold
This article is about the 2008 temporary Rijksmuseum Boerhaave exhibition Quest for Absolute Zero. It was the first major project aimed at broader target groups and proved to be a very useful experience in the process of renewing the permanent exhibition.
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Museums theme – Science vs technology in a museum’s display: changes in the Vienna Museum of Technology with a focus on permanent and temporary exhibitions and new forms of science education
This article focuses on the development of the displays and the content of the Vienna Museum of Technology as a whole, and on new educational approaches in cooperation with schools in particular.
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Museums theme – making Split + Splice: Fragments from the Age of Biomedicine
The author outlines the development and intellectual underpinnings of the Dibner Award-winning exhibition Split + Splice: Fragments from the Age of Biomedicine (Medical Museion, 2009). Deep connections between biotechnologies, technologies of the self, and the technology that is an exhibition are examined.