Nature and culture
Objects, disciplines and the Manchester Museum
By Samuel Alberti
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- Format: Paperback
- ISBN: 978-0-7190-8903-9
- Pages: 256
- Price: £16.99
- Published Date: October 2012
Description
Newly available in paperback, this book takes 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, 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.
How did objects become knowledge? Who encountered museum objects on their way to museums? What happened to collections within the museum? 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 the history of science, cultural history and museology.
Contents
Introduction: museum historiographies
1. Prologue: the Manchester Natural History Society
2. Nature: scientific disciplines in the museum
3. Culture: artefacts and disciplinary formation
4. Acquisition: collecting networks and the museum
5. Practice: technique and the lives of objects in the collection
6. Visitors: audiences and objects
Conclusion: the museum in the twentieth century
Notes
List of archives
Bibliography
Index
Author
Sam Alberti is Lecturer in Art Gallery and Museum Studies at the Centre for Museology and Research Fellow at the Manchester Museum, University of Manchester