Nature and culture

Museums are engines of difference. This book analyses how nature and culture are constructed within them and how museum objects and practices shaped twentieth-century disciplines. It is a vital new work; the first to take the University of Manchester’s Museum as its subject. By setting the museum in its cultural and intellectual contexts, Nature and culture explores twentieth-century collecting and display, and the status of the object in the modern world. Beginning with the origins of the Manchester Museum in Victorian civic culture, accounting for its development as an internationally renowned university museum, and concluding at its major expansion at the turn of the millennium, this book casts new light on the history of museums.

Each chapter looks at the collection from a different perspective. What was the status of material culture in natural history, archaeology and anthropology over the course of the twentieth century – how did objects become knowledge? Who encountered museum objects on their way to museums? What happened to collections within the museum – how were they preserved, catalogued and displayed? How did visitors use and respond to objects? In answering these questions, Nature and Culture illuminates not only the history of one institution, but also contributes to wider discussions in history of science, cultural history and museology. It will become essential reading for academics, post-graduates and museum professionals.

Contents:-

List of figures
Acknowledgements
List of abbreviations
Introduction: museum historiographies
I. Museums and disciplines
II. The lives of objects
Notes
1. Prologue: the Manchester Natural History Society
I. The Museum on Peter Street
II. Visitors and staff
III. Transfer and dissolution
Notes
2. Nature: scientific disciplines in the museum
I. Unified nature 1887–1910
II. Expanding collections 1910–50
III. Nature dislocated 1950–90
IV. Conclusion: cultural cartography and the Museum
Notes
3. Culture: artefacts and disciplinary formation
I. Culture precipitated 1890–1927
II. Nature and culture distinguished 1927–69
III. Culture consolidated 1969–90
IV. Conclusion: shaping disciplines
Notes
4. Acquisition: collecting networks and the museum
I. Foundation and empire
II. The economy of donation
III. Value for money?
IV. The museum and the field
V. Transfers and loans
VI. Conclusion: the politics of acquisition
Notes
5. Practice: technique and the lives of objects in the collection
I. Preparing and conserving
II. Recording and cataloguing
III. Storing and displaying
IV. Conclusion: towards a history of museum practice
6. Visitors: audiences and objects
I. Organising the visitor
II. Educating the visitor
III. Town and gown
IV. Involving the visitor
V. The visitor experience
VI. Conclusion: expanding the history of museums
Notes
Conclusion: the museum in the twentieth century
Notes
List of archives
Bibliography