Nature's Museums - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Nature's Museums write by Carla Yanni. This book was released on 2005-09-09. Nature's Museums available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Yanni (art history, Rutgers U.) examines the relationship between architecture and science in the 19th century by considering the physical placement and display of natural artifacts in Victorian natural history museums. She begins by discussing the problem of classification, the social history of collecting, as well as architectural competitions an
Natural Museums
Natural Museums - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Natural Museums write by Kathy S. Mason. This book was released on 2004-08-31. Natural Museums available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. In 1872, the world’s first national park was founded at Yellowstone. Although ideas of nature conservation were not embraced generally by the American public, five more parks were created before the turn of the century. By 1916, the year that the National Park Service was born, the country could boast of fourteen national parks, including such celebrated areas as Yosemite and Sequoia. Kathy Mason demonstrates that Congress, park superintendents, and the American public were forming general, often tacit notions of the parks’ purpose before the new bureau was established. Although the Park Service recently has placed some emphasis on protecting samples of North America’s ecosystems, the earliest national parks were viewed as natural museums—monuments to national grandeur that would edify visitors. Not only were these early parks to preserve monumental and unique natural attractions, but they also had to be of no use to mining, lumbering, agriculture, and other “productive” industries. Natural Museums examines the notions of park monumentalism, “worthlessness,” and national significance, as well as the parks’ roles as wilderness preserves and recreational centers.
Life on Display
Life on Display - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Life on Display write by Karen A. Rader. This book was released on 2014-10-03. Life on Display available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Rich with archival detail and compelling characters, Life on Display uses the history of biological exhibitions to analyze museums’ shifting roles in twentieth-century American science and society. Karen A. Rader and Victoria E. M. Cain chronicle profound changes in these exhibitions—and the institutions that housed them—between 1910 and 1990, ultimately offering new perspectives on the history of museums, science, and science education. Rader and Cain explain why science and natural history museums began to welcome new audiences between the 1900s and the 1920s and chronicle the turmoil that resulted from the introduction of new kinds of biological displays. They describe how these displays of life changed dramatically once again in the 1930s and 1940s, as museums negotiated changing, often conflicting interests of scientists, educators, and visitors. The authors then reveal how museum staffs, facing intense public and scientific scrutiny, experimented with wildly different definitions of life science and life science education from the 1950s through the 1980s. The book concludes with a discussion of the influence that corporate sponsorship and blockbuster economics wielded over science and natural history museums in the century’s last decades. A vivid, entertaining study of the ways science and natural history museums shaped and were shaped by understandings of science and public education in the twentieth-century United States, Life on Display will appeal to historians, sociologists, and ethnographers of American science and culture, as well as museum practitioners and general readers.
Windows on Nature
Windows on Nature - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Windows on Nature write by Stephen Christopher Quinn. This book was released on 2006-04. Windows on Nature available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Profiles more than forty habitat dioramas from the American Museum of Natural History, describing each one's contents and creation and presenting full-color photos and archival images.
Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads
Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads write by Stephen T. Asma. This book was released on 2003-05-01. Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. The natural history museum is a place where the line between "high" and "low" culture effectively vanishes--where our awe of nature, our taste for the bizarre, and our thirst for knowledge all blend happily together. But as Stephen Asma shows in Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads, there is more going on in these great institutions than just smart fun. Asma takes us on a wide-ranging tour of natural history museums in New York and Chicago, London and Paris, interviewing curators, scientists, and exhibit designers, and providing a wealth of fascinating observations. We learn how the first museums were little more than high-toned side shows, with such garish exhibits as the pickled head of Peter the Great's lover. In contrast, today's museums are hot-beds of serious science, funding major research in such fields as anthropology and archaeology. "Rich in detail, lucid explanation, telling anecdotes, and fascinating characters.... Asma has rendered a fascinating and credible account of how natural history museums are conceived and presented. It's the kind of book that will not only engage a wide and diverse readership, but it should, best of all, send them flocking to see how we look at nature and ourselves in those fabulous legacies of the curiosity cabinet."--The Boston Herald.
