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Life on Display Revolutionizing U.S. Museums of Science & Natural History in the Twentieth Century

By: Karen A Rader(Author), Victoria EM Cain(Author)
467 pages, 24 b/w photos and b/w illustrations
Life on Display
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  • Life on Display ISBN: 9780226598734 Paperback Apr 2019 Not in stock: Usually dispatched within 6 days
    £33.99
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  • Life on Display ISBN: 9780226079660 Hardback Oct 2014 Out of Print #215696
Selected version: £33.99
About this book Contents Customer reviews Biography Related titles

About this book

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. Life on Display 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

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

Customer Reviews

Biography

Karen A. Rader is associate professor in the Department of History at Virginia Commonwealth University. Victoria E. M. Cain is assistant professor in the Department of History at Northeastern University.

By: Karen A Rader(Author), Victoria EM Cain(Author)
467 pages, 24 b/w photos and b/w illustrations
Media reviews

- Won the History of Education Society: History of Education Society Outstanding Book Award
- Won the Media Ecology Association: Lewis Mumford Award, Ecology of Technics
- Won the AERA Division F: New Scholar's Book Award

"The exquisite dioramas in New York's American Museum of Natural History have wowed crowds since the early twentieth century. But as historians Karen Rader and Victoria Cain reveal in this cogent study, they were part of a broader revolution: the 'New Museum Idea,' which saw 'smell machines' and dynamic models supersede dusty cases. The behind-the-scene struggles between 'edutainers' and serious museum researchers were, they show, no less dynamic."
– Barbara Kiser, Nature

"Focuses on the evolution of U.S. science and nature museums from the late 19th century to the early 21st century, stitching together a number of surprising insights into an excellent history."
– Kirk R. Johnson, Science

"Rader and Cain utilize a rich, wide-ranging set of institutional records from various natural history/science museums to examine the debates among museum professionals. As such, this is a valuable addition to the institutional record of debates over the mission of museums in democratic society. The prose is well structured, and the authors' chronological approach to framing this narrative makes the argument clear. An excellent addition to the growing literature on museums. Essential."
Choice

"In lucid prose that's a real pleasure to read, Rader and Cain's new book chronicles a revolution in modern American science education and culture [...] Life on Display simultaneously develops an argument for a 'renegotiation of the relationship between display, research, and education in American museums of nature and science,' and opens up an archive of fascinating (and at times hilarious and moving) stories of members of the museum-going public (some of who gifted dog fleas and dead pets to their local museums), non-human inhabitants of interactive museum displays (including an owl with a penchant for riding in cars and 'trim, up-on-their-toes cockroaches'), and museum professionals who painted, debated, made dioramas, invented 'Exploratoria,' and occasionally wrote limericks. This is a book for anyone interested in American history, museum studies, visual culture, science studies, the history of education, grasshopper surgery, or Jurassic Park (among many, many other fields it contributes to). It's a wonderfully engaging history."
– Carla Nappi, New Books in Science, Technology, and Society

"Fast-paced and well written, this pathbreaking account of twentieth-century museums reveals their dramatic transformation from reliance on collections as their defining characteristic to centers of public education and entertainment. Rader and Cain document how well-established major museums – particularly those in New York, Washington, Chicago, and other major cities – were at times exuberantly experimental; ultimately, however, the familiar institutions we know today emerged through rethinking of mission and debates involving scientists, exhibit designers, educators, and communities. With its thorough attention to historical evidence, this engaging volume provokes reflection on important issues that continue to confront museums and the societies they serve."
– Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, author of Teaching Children Science

"In Life on Display we meet the 'museum men' (and they were mainly men) and other staff who struggled variously with questions of the relationship between museum research and display, how to raise funding, and how best to deal with sometimes recalcitrant visitors or overenthusiastic donors (yet another horned toad or dog flea); and also with matters such as into which pose an elephant should be taxidermied or how to cope with the sheer vibrancy of biodiversity. This wonderfully detailed account of the changing world of US museums of natural history and science takes us from miked-up grasshoppers to shrimp ballets, from the transparent woman to the cardiac kitchen – and, of course, from dinosaur skeletons to the animatronic T rex. Like the best of the exhibitions that it describes, Life on Display is based in rich, scholarly research but made thoroughly accessible by its creators' skill and the sheer interest of what is described – it is definitely not to be missed!"
– Sharon Macdonald, University of York

"Museums of nature and science are well served by knowing the twentieth-century development of their sector in cause-and-effect terms. The journey continues. In the pivotal twenty-first century, museums of nature and science are being called upon to illuminate the interdependency between Earth and human affairs. This timely book provides a widely referenced baseline to inform the ongoing innovation of these institutions towards their optimal states of external relevance and internal sustainability."
– Emlyn Koster, Director, North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences

"For anyone who has enjoyed a trip to a science museum – and who hasn't?! – Rader and Cain provide a fascinating backstage tour of these institutions. What they discover is that across the twentieth century the drama that has gone on behind the scenes is just as interesting as the exhibits we all come to see. Far from being dusty, static places, museums that put 'life on display' are dynamic and contentious in ways the public never sees."
– Steven Conn, Ohio State University

"In Life on Display we meet the 'museum men' (and they were mainly men) and other staff who struggled variously with questions of the relationship between museum research and display, how to raise funding, and how best to deal with sometimes recalcitrant visitors or overenthusiastic donors (yet another horned toad or dog flea); and also with matters such as into which pose an elephant should be taxidermied or how to cope with the sheer vibrancy of biodiversity. This wonderfully detailed account of the changing world of US museums of natural history and science takes us from miked-up grasshoppers to shrimp ballets, from the transparent woman to the cardiac kitchen – and, of course, from dinosaur skeletons to the animatronic T rex. Like the best of the exhibitions that it describes, Life on Display is based in rich, scholarly research but made thoroughly accessible by its creators' skill and the sheer interest of what is described – it is definitely not to be missed!"
– Sharon Macdonald, University of York

"Fast-paced and well written, this pathbreaking account of twentieth-century museums reveals their dramatic transformation from reliance on collections as their defining characteristic to centers of public education and entertainment. Rader and Cain document how well-established major museums – particularly those in New York, Washington, Chicago, and other major cities – were at times exuberantly experimental; ultimately, however, the familiar institutions we know today emerged through rethinking of mission and debates involving scientists, exhibit designers, educators, and communities. With its thorough attention to historical evidence, this engaging volume provokes reflection on important issues that continue to confront museums and the societies they serve."
– Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, author of Teaching Children Science

"Museums of nature and science are well served by knowing the twentieth-century development of their sector in cause-and-effect terms. The journey continues. In the pivotal twenty-first century, museums of nature and science are being called upon to illuminate the interdependency between Earth and human affairs. This timely book provides a widely referenced baseline to inform the ongoing innovation of these institutions towards their optimal states of external relevance and internal sustainability."
– Emlyn Koster, Director, North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences

"Gracefully written and deeply researched, Life on Display documents the social and intellectual forces that remodeled American natural history museums during the twentieth century, changing science-driven exhibition halls into centers for mass diversion. Rader and Cain have created a must-read for scholars of popularization of science and for anyone with an interest in science museums today."
– Marcel Chotkowski LaFollette, author of Science on American Television

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