Edward Forbes (1815–1854) and the exhibition of natural order in Edinburgh

2010 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 309-317 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoffrey N. Swinney
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Social Agency ◽  
Natural Order ◽  
Natural History Museums ◽  
History Museums ◽  
Licensed Premises ◽  
Perceived Importance

The roles, affordances and social agency of natural history museums are discussed in relation to the writings of Edward Forbes. These signal a motivation, in the mid-nineteenth-century, to naturalize the established social order through the systematic arrangement and display of natural history specimens. The perceived importance of the embodied messages of social order, as an antidote to radicalism and revolution, overrode concerns about temperance and abstinence and immediate fears for the physical safety of collections. The tensions between temperance, and the broader concerns about social order, were played out over the matter of the museums themselves being licensed premises.

Placing nature: natural history collections and their owners in nineteenth-century provincial England

2002 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 291-311 ◽  
Author(s):  
SAMUEL J. M. M. ALBERTI
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Admission Criteria ◽  
Natural History Museums ◽  
Intended Audience ◽  
History Museums ◽  
History Of ◽  
National Governments

The cultural history of museums is crucial to the understanding of nineteenth-century natural history and its place in wider society, and yet although many of the larger metropolitan institutions are well charted, there remains very little accessible work on the hundreds of English collections outside London and the ancient universities. Natural history museums have been studied as part of the imperial project and as instruments of national governments; this paper presents an intermediary level of control, examining the various individuals and institutions who owned and managed museums at a local level in provincial England, and their intended audience constituencies. The shifting forms and functions of collections in Newcastle, Sheffield and Manchester are studied in the hands of private collectors, learned societies, municipal authorities and civic colleges. I argue that the civic elite retained control of museums throughout the nineteenth century, and although the admission criteria of these various groups became ostensibly more inclusive, privileged access continued to be granted to expert and esteemed visitors.

The meaning of ceraunia: archaeology, natural history and the interpretation of prehistoric stone artefacts in the eighteenth century

2002 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 255-269 ◽  
Author(s):  
MATTHEW R. GOODRUM
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Stone Age ◽  
Natural History Museums ◽  
History Museums ◽  
The Earth ◽  
History Of

Historians of archaeology have noted that prehistoric stone artefacts were first identified as such during the seventeenth century, and a great deal has been written about the formulation of the idea of a Stone Age in the nineteenth century. Much less attention has been devoted to the study of prehistoric artefacts during the eighteenth century. Yet it was during this time that researchers first began systematically to collect, classify and interpret the cultural and historical meaning of these objects as archaeological specimens rather than geological specimens. These investigations were conducted within the broader context of eighteenth-century antiquarianism and natural history. As a result, they offer an opportunity to trace the interrelationships that existed between the natural sciences and the science of prehistoric archaeology, which demonstrates that geological theories of the history of the earth, ethnographic observations of ‘savage peoples’ and natural history museums all played important roles in the interpretation of prehistoric stone implements during the eighteenth century.

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