One thing about the Preston reading that particularly impressed itself on me was how much he favors the 'history of science' perspective brought up by Latour. While Preston does include information about our current scientific view of the world, his focus is much more on the viewpoints and practices of the past, how these have changed over time, and how these changes are displayed at the Museum. It seems to me a strange, slightly comic project--a history of history--and it manifests most vividly in Preston's account of the Brontosaurus on display at the museum, with an 'incorrect' head. To some, this would be a fallacy (although a necessary one--the model could collapse if the head was replaced); to Preston, this is a fascinating artifact that carries with it the colorful history of the museum.
Sam
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My first thought upon reading the great dinosaur gold rush in Dinosaurs in the Attic is that this is fit for an episode of TMZ, that celebrity gossip show, or at the least a reality TV show on Bravo. As the discovery of dinosaurs riveted the nation, the two men who had devoted their lives to finding the fossils were at odds, pulling out all the stops, to argue their respective cases for who got credit in for the latest find in the ‘race to publish’. They resorted to out right confrontations in the quasi-scientific journals of the day, since any scientific journal that willingly sells a ‘controlling right’ is obviously suspect. The media would have a field day with this– picture’s of Cope and Marsh would appear in the tabloids– with headlines like: “War of the bones” or How does Marsh ‘Cope’ with the disagreements? Veiled discussions of the mental state of each of the scientists would have been presented.
ReplyDeleteThe ‘scandal’ highlighted in Elizabeth Noble Shor’s aptly titled article “The Fossil Feud” would have been an equally big deal in the media. It certainly would have made a headline on page 6 of the Post. Given the quacks who were discovering these fossils, it is amazing that Osborn and Jesup were able to capitalize upon the field of paleontological research, and Osborn was able to capture public fascination with dinosaurs and use it to position the American Museum of Natural History as one of the three leading history museums in the world. He did it by managing to by-pass the circus and rely on the specimens discovered by Barnum Brown, the most notable dinosaur collector of the time. Barnum Brown sidestepped the publishing route at the crux of the fight between Cope and Marsh. He was by all accounts, an ‘indifferent’ scientist; perhaps that is what made him successful.
While I deeply enjoy reading about these aspects of The American Museum of Natural History I wouldn't otherwise be aware of, I feel like almost all the stories and essays bring me to the same conclusion being that science and even that truthful history and history do not go hand in hand. What I mean by this is that everything we read or come to comprehend at the museum is put through such a process that it's far from raw and does that make it even more difficult for us to comprehend? While looking at another response made a comparison was made that the museum is a playground for the rich, but, at the same time, isn't the museum quickly becoming a playground for the attendees itself?
ReplyDeleteTo get back to a more applicable topic, the writing made me think of all the pieces of history and science that can be missing which changes the meaning of an object- while some pieces have a particularly lurid past others are left without definition it's hard for me to reconcile a middle ground. When I consider what is where and why I definitely wonder about each objects identity (namely because in art history that is often the bottom line), this article helped enlighten me to think of exhibitions as more of a whole.