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Life on Display : Revolutionizing U.S. Museums of Science and Natural History in the Twentieth Century / Karen A. Rader, Victoria E. M. Cain.
De Gruyter University of Chicago Press Complete eBook-Package 2014-2015 Available online
View online- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Rader, Karen A., Author.
- Cain, Victoria E. M., Author.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Natural history museums--United States--Exhibitions--History.
- Natural history museums.
- Science museums--United States--Exhibitions--History.
- Science museums.
- Museum exhibits--United States--History.
- Museum exhibits.
- Museum techniques--United States--History.
- Museum techniques.
- Displays in education--History.
- Displays in education.
- Physical Description:
- 1 online resource (482 p.)
- Place of Publication:
- Chicago : University of Chicago Press, [2014]
- Language Note:
- English
- Summary:
- Rich with archival detail and compelling characters, Life on Display uses the history of biological exhibitions to analyze museums' shifting roles in twentieth-century American science and society. Karen A. Rader and Victoria E. M. Cain chronicle profound changes in these exhibitions-and the institutions that housed them-between 1910 and 1990, ultimately offering new perspectives on the history of museums, science, and science education. Rader and Cain explain why science and natural history museums began to welcome new audiences between the 1900s and the 1920s and chronicle the turmoil that resulted from the introduction of new kinds of biological displays. They describe how these displays of life changed dramatically once again in the 1930s and 1940s, as museums negotiated changing, often conflicting interests of scientists, educators, and visitors. The authors then reveal how museum staffs, facing intense public and scientific scrutiny, experimented with wildly different definitions of life science and life science education from the 1950s through the 1980s. The book concludes with a discussion of the influence that corporate sponsorship and blockbuster economics wielded over science and natural history museums in the century's last decades. A vivid, entertaining study of the ways science and natural history museums shaped and were shaped by understandings of science and public education in the twentieth-century United States, Life on Display will appeal to historians, sociologists, and ethnographers of American science and culture, as well as museum practitioners and general readers.
- Contents:
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: The Mission of Display
- 1. "A Vision of the Future": The New Museum Idea and Display Reform, 1890-1915
- 2. The Drama of the Diorama, 1910-1935
- 3. Displays in Motion: Experimentation and Stagnation in Exhibition, 1925-1940
- 4. Diversifying Displays, Diverging Museums: Postwar Life Science Education, 1941-1956
- 5. "An Investment in the Future of America": Competing Pedgogies in Post-Sputnik Museums, 1957-1969
- 6. The Exploratorium Effect: Redefining Relevance and Interactive Display, 1969-1980
- 7. From Diversity to Standardization: Edutainment and Engagement in Museums at the End of the Century, 1976-2005
- Notes
- Bibliographic Essay on Sources
- Bibliography
- Index
- Notes:
- Description based upon print version of record.
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
- Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2020)
- ISBN:
- 0-226-59873-X
- 0-226-07983-X
- OCLC:
- 889813289
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