Rethinking Evolution in the Museum
Rethinking Evolution in the Museum

Author: Monique Scott

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2007-11-19

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 1134135904

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Rethinking Evolution in the Museum explores the ways diverse natural history museum audiences imagine their evolutionary heritage. In particular, the book considers how the meanings constructed by audiences of museum exhibitions are a product of dynamic interplay between museum iconography and powerful images museum visitors bring with them to the museum. In doing so, the book illustrates how the preconceived images held by museum audiences about anthropology, Africa, and the museum itself strongly impact the human origins exhibition experience. Although museological theory has come increasingly to recognize that museum audiences ‘make meaning’ in exhibitions, or make their own complex interpretations of museum exhibitions, few scholars have explicitly asked how. Rethinking Evolution in the Museum, however, provides a rare window into visitor perceptions at four world-class museums—the Natural History Museum and Horniman Museum in London, the National Museums of Kenya in Nairobi and the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Through rigorous and novel mixed methods (quantitative and qualitative) covering nearly 500 museum visitors, this innovative study shows that audiences of human origins exhibitions interpret evolution exhibitions through a profoundly complex convergence of personal, political, intellectual, emotional and cultural interpretive strategies. This book also reveals that natural history museum visitors often respond to museum exhibitions similarly because they use common cultural tools picked up from globalized popular media circulating outside of the museum. One tool of particular interest is the notion that human evolution has proceeded linearly from a bestial African prehistory to a civilized European present. Despite critical growths in anthropological science and museum displays, the outdated Victorian progress motif lingers persistently in popular media and the popular imagination. Rethinking Evolution in the Museum sheds light on our relationship with natural history museums and will be crucial to those people interested in understanding the connection between the visitor, the museum and media culture outside of the museum context.

Rethinking Evolution in the Museum
Rethinking Evolution in the Museum

Author: Monique Scott

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2007-11-19

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 1134135912

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Rethinking Evolution in the Museum explores the ways diverse natural history museum audiences imagine their evolutionary heritage. In particular, the book considers how the meanings constructed by audiences of museum exhibitions are a product of dynamic interplay between museum iconography and powerful images museum visitors bring with them to the museum. In doing so, the book illustrates how the preconceived images held by museum audiences about anthropology, Africa, and the museum itself strongly impact the human origins exhibition experience. Although museological theory has come increasingly to recognize that museum audiences ‘make meaning’ in exhibitions, or make their own complex interpretations of museum exhibitions, few scholars have explicitly asked how. Rethinking Evolution in the Museum, however, provides a rare window into visitor perceptions at four world-class museums—the Natural History Museum and Horniman Museum in London, the National Museums of Kenya in Nairobi and the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Through rigorous and novel mixed methods (quantitative and qualitative) covering nearly 500 museum visitors, this innovative study shows that audiences of human origins exhibitions interpret evolution exhibitions through a profoundly complex convergence of personal, political, intellectual, emotional and cultural interpretive strategies. This book also reveals that natural history museum visitors often respond to museum exhibitions similarly because they use common cultural tools picked up from globalized popular media circulating outside of the museum. One tool of particular interest is the notion that human evolution has proceeded linearly from a bestial African prehistory to a civilized European present. Despite critical growths in anthropological science and museum displays, the outdated Victorian progress motif lingers persistently in popular media and the popular imagination. Rethinking Evolution in the Museum sheds light on our relationship with natural history museums and will be crucial to those people interested in understanding the connection between the visitor, the museum and media culture outside of the museum context.

The Evolution Controversy in America
The Evolution Controversy in America

Author: George E. Webb

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2021-05-11

Total Pages: 457

ISBN-13: 0813182727

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A comprehensive intellectual history of America’s century-old debate over teaching evolution in public schools. For well over a century, the United States has witnessed a prolonged debate over the teaching of organic evolution in the nation’s public schools. The controversy that began with the publication of Darwin’s Origin of the Species had by the 1920s expanded to include theologians, politicians, and educators. The Scopes trial of 1925 provided the growing antievolution movement with significant publicity and led to a decline in the teaching of evolution. In The Evolution Crisis in America, George E. Webb details how efforts to improve science education in the wake of Sputnik resurrected antievolution sentiment and led to the emergence of “creation science” as the most recent expression of that sentiment. Creationists continue to demand “balanced treatment” of theories of creation and evolution in public schools, even though their efforts have been declared unconstitutional in a series of federal court cases. Their battles have been much more successful at the grassroots level, garnering support from local politicians and educators. Webb attributes the success of creationists primarily to the lack of scientific literacy among the American public.

The Evolution of Library and Museum Partnerships
The Evolution of Library and Museum Partnerships

Author: Lisa Gottlieb

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2004-11-30

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 0313058857

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These authors examine the unique social roles of libraries and museums, review historical precedents as well as library-museum partnerships funded in recent years through IMLS grants, and forge an exciting vision of a new library-museum hybrid. The juxtaposition of library collections and museum artifacts, they assert, has the potential to create authentic, interactive experiences for community members, and it can help establish a distinct, meaningful, and sustainable role for libraries. In the authors' words, libraries can then reassert themselves as places devoted to contemplation, wonder, knowledge acquisition, and critical inquiry. Commercialization, edutainment, and the library as a learning community are just some of the fascinating topics addressed as the authors explore the future's terrain, and suggest how libraries might situate themselves upon it. Libraries, museums, and the ways in which they are used by patrons have drastically changed in past decades. Digitization projects, infotainment, and the Internet are redefining the library's and the museum's roles in the community. What are the implications for the future of these institutions? These authors examine the unique social roles of libraries and museums, review historical precedents as well as library-museum partnerships funded in recent years through IMLS grants, and forge an exciting vision of a new library-museum hybrid. The juxtaposition of library collections and museum artifacts, they assert, has the potential to create authentic, interactive experiences for community members, and it can help establish a distinct, meaningful, and sustainable role for libraries. In the authors' words, libraries can then reassert themselves as places devoted to contemplation, wonder, knowledge acquisition, and critical inquiry. Commercialization, edutainment, and the library as a learning community are just some of the fascinating topics addressed as the authors explore the future's terrain, and suggest how libraries might situate themselves upon it.

History Museums in the United States
History Museums in the United States

Author: Warren Leon

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 1989

Total Pages: 364

ISBN-13: 9780252060649

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Every year 100 million visitor's tour historic houses and re-created villages, examine museum artifacts, and walk through battlefields. But what do they learn? What version of the past are history museums offering to the public? And how well do these institutions reflect the latest historical scholarship? Fifteen scholars and museum staff members here provide the first critical assessment of American history museums, a vital arena for shaping popular historical consciousness. They consider the form and content of exhibits, ranging from Gettysburg to Disney World. They also examine the social and political contexts on which museums operate.

Exhibit A
Exhibit A

Author: Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen

Publisher: Phaidon Press

Published: 2018-06-22

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780714875170

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The first book to explore the world's most significant architectural exhibitions of the 20th century How do you exhibit a building, a locality, a city? Exhibit A reveals how architecture has pushed the boundaries of exhibition as a medium and how, in turn, exhibitions have shaped the discipline of architecture. Focusing on 80 landmark architecture exhibitions mounted in countries around the world between 1948 and 2000, and featuring 300 images, this groundbreaking overview is both a vital reference and a visually compelling study of the way we look at built work.