Book Description
The Politics of Display brings together studies of contemporary and historical museum shows and challenges the notion that these exhibitions are politically exempt. For example, what does it mean when the Enola Gay, the aircraft which dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima, is displayed?

The contributors to this volume chart the changing relationship between displays and their audience and analyzes the consequent shift in styles of representation towards interactive and multimedia displays. Examples are taken from exhibitions of science, technology and industry, anthropology, geology, natural history and medicine. Contributors include Steven W. Allison-Bunnell, Ken Arnold, Tony Bennett, Thomas F. Gieryn, Penelope Harvey, Sharon Macdonald and Tracy Lang Teslow. ... Read more

Product Description
Examines in detail and with many specific references the transfer of natural collections from private to public spaces. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Sheds a judicious and scholarly light upon humankind's quest to better understand the surrounding world
From Private To Public: Natural Collections And Museums is an anthology of essays by learned authors contemplating the emergency of Natural History as a discipline during the period from the Renaissance to the end of the 18th century. Essays include "Taste, Order and Aesthetics in Eighteenth-Century Mineral Collections", "The Museum of Alexandria: Myth and Model", "Natural Collections in the Spanish Renaissance", and much more. Seeking to balance Natural History's traditional emphasis on specimens and collections over writings, From Private To Public sheds a judicious and scholarly light upon humankind's quest to better understand the surrounding world. An excellent contribution to community and academic library Natural History study shelves.

Sheds a judicious and scholarly light upon humankind's quest to better understand the surrounding world
From Private To Public: Natural Collections And Museums is an anthology of essays by learned authors contemplating the emergency of Natural History as a discipline during the period from the Renaissance to the end of the 18th century. Essays include "Taste, Order and Aesthetics in Eighteenth-Century Mineral Collections", "The Museum of Alexandria: Myth and Model", "Natural Collections in the Spanish Renaissance", and much more. Seeking to balance Natural History's traditional emphasis on specimens and collections over writings, From Private To Public sheds a judicious and scholarly light upon humankind's quest to better understand the surrounding world. An excellent contribution to community and academic library Natural History study shelves.

Sheds a judicious and scholarly light upon humankind's quest to better understand the surrounding world
From Private To Public: Natural Collections And Museums is an anthology of essays by learned authors contemplating the emergency of Natural History as a discipline during the period from the Renaissance to the end of the 18th century. Essays include "Taste, Order and Aesthetics in Eighteenth-Century Mineral Collections", "The Museum of Alexandria: Myth and Model", "Natural Collections in the Spanish Renaissance", and much more. Seeking to balance Natural History's traditional emphasis on specimens and collections over writings, From Private To Public sheds a judicious and scholarly light upon humankind's quest to better understand the surrounding world. An excellent contribution to community and academic library Natural History study shelves.

Sheds a judicious and scholarly light upon humankind's quest to better understand the surrounding world
From Private To Public: Natural Collections And Museums is an anthology of essays by learned authors contemplating the emergency of Natural History as a discipline during the period from the Renaissance to the end of the 18th century. Essays include "Taste, Order and Aesthetics in Eighteenth-Century Mineral Collections", "The Museum of Alexandria: Myth and Model", "Natural Collections in the Spanish Renaissance", and much more. Seeking to balance Natural History's traditional emphasis on specimens and collections over writings, From Private To Public sheds a judicious and scholarly light upon humankind's quest to better understand the surrounding world. An excellent contribution to community and academic library Natural History study shelves.
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Book Description
What goes into planning a successful exhibition, and how do we know one when we see it? This book gathers the thinking of leading exhibition professionals in a point-counterpoint format that grew out of an invitational conference at the Exploratorium. Featured are descriptions of "Twelve Noteworthy Science Exhibitions," including budgets and timelines, project goals, participants, and narratives of the exhibition development process. A CD augments these descriptions with color images and several video walkthroughs. The concluding section, "In the Vernacular," suggests strategies for keeping creativity alive while learning from past practice, using three novel formats—a "Creativity Killers" poster to hang by your desk, a "Muzine" full of irreverent ideas, and tear-out "Weed Seeds" cards with tips for encouraging innovation. Sponsored by the Exploratorium. ... Read more

Book Description
The collection of natural mineral crystals housed at the Houston Museum of Natural Science is the finest and best known in the world. Now the treasures of this singular collection are shown in resplendent photographs that will seduce both the connoisseur of beauty and the student of natural history.

The spectacular and rare specimens on display here, from a huge imperial topaz crystal weighing more than 2,000 carats to a crystallized gold cluster that is one of the most highly coveted objects in the mineral kingdom, are true masterpieces, the Rembrandts and Picassos of the natural world. Like fine art, minerals are prized for their aesthetic qualities-color, luster, sculptural composition-and for their provenance. Avidly pursued by naturalists throughout the centuries, precious metals and gem crystals have a fascinating history. Stories regarding the pursuit and discovery of these precious natural objects, including tales of good luck and hardship, are related in these pages. Essays that explore connoisseurship in the mineral kingdom and chronicle the history of this noble pursuit add to the appeal of this unique volume. AUTHOR BIO: Wendell E. Wilson is editor and publisher of The Mineralogical Record. Joel A. Bartsch is curator of gems and minerals at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

a treasury of great specimens
The specimens shown in this book from the Houston Museum are truly the top of their class. This is a coffee-table book for the mineral collector, and only falls short of a visit to the museum itself.

Masterpieces of the Mineral World
Excellent detail and photography. Very good section on attributes of mineral specimens, locations,and collections through the centuries.A wonderful table top book for everyone to enjoy.

Masterpieces is a masterpiece
Minerals and crystals are among the most beautiful objects on the planet.Their sculptural shapes and intense colors can be mesmerizing.Amazingly these specimens haven't been "enhanced" by cutting or polishing.They are as God made them.These magnificent photographs of the world's greatest collection capture their beauty as well as any book I've ever seen.

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Book Description

Book Description
Drawing on the peerless collection of the National Air and Space Museum, this magnificent book brings us the story of the conquest of the skies. From the first hot-air balloon to the Wright brothers, the Apollo moon landing, the Mars Pathfinder mission and beyond, Air and Space beautifully captures the innovators, discoveries, and adventures of aviation and spaceflight. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Great Book
A good history of flight coupled with excellent photographs. Recommended.

Air and Space : The National Air and Space Museum Story
Worth it for the photos alone. The writer shares with us his life long love of aviation. He explores the history of aviation in a fashion that will please the expert as well as the curious.

He uses the Smithsoniancollection to make points about the hsitory of aviation. The book is notlimited to a description about the collection, th e history is augmentedwith photos and anecdotes. A great book for enthusiasts, history buffs,fans of photography and readers in general ... Read more

Amazon.com
Scientists in the medieval and early-modern eras faced many obstacles to sharing their discoveries, among them the lack of organized, comparative collections of specimens. Such assemblages were almost exclusively in the hands of wealthy individuals, and scholars of more modest means had to content themselves with "cabinets of wonder," potpourris of natural curiosities whose message was often no more profound than "behold, death is near."

One of the signal developments of the Victorian era, observes art historian Carla Yanni, was the building of great museums, accessible to both scholars and the interested public, to house large collections of fossils, minerals, and other relics of the natural world. Some of these museums, such as London's Pantherion, offered astonishing and sometimes fictitious spectacles: in the Pantherion, for example, "stuffed animals were staged in frightening battles," while a great artificial swamp filled with sculptures of dinosaurs ringed the Sydenham Crystal Palace. Others, such as the incomparable Natural History Museum of London, became clearinghouses for the exchange of scientific ideas in the age of Darwin and Huxley. By the 1880s, science museums of all kinds had become popular destinations for family outings, and also the subject of considerable debate, with some scholars objecting to the supposed vulgarization of knowledge to which spectacles inevitably led.

But, Yanni notes, in their many forms, these museums also became the "primary places of interaction between natural science and its diverse publics," allowing greater participation in learning and ultimately serving science well. Heavily illustrated with period engravings and architectural renderings, Yanni's book is a useful and entertaining contribution to the history of science. --Gregory McNamee Book Description
"Nature's Museums . . . is a major contribution to our understanding of the history of public architecture, scientific practice, and the cultural life of the Victorian era." -- Jim Secord, University of Cambridge
Cabinets of curiosity, glass-enclosed cathedrals stuffed with sea shells, butterflies, lizards, birds, animals, and exotic marvels of all kinds -- our Victorian forebears went to extraordinary lengths to acquire and display the strange fruits of the earth. Their carefully organized collections helped shape our vision of the natural world and form the social and architectural construction of knowledge we confront today.
In this beautifully illustrated book, historian Carla Yanni brings together the history of architecture and the history of science in an engaging study of how the Victorians approached the housing and display of scientific artifacts. ... Read more

Book Description
What does a jar of preserved leopard frogs or the articulated skeleton of a beached sperm whale say about the way we understand nature in North Carolina? Margaret Martin explores this question in the story of the North Carolina State Museum of Natural Sciences, founded over 120 years ago to serve as a keeper of natural history collections, a vital resource for the scientific community, and a public interpreter of our natural world.

The book is organized around the museum's collections: Rocks and Minerals, Fossils, Invertebrates, Fishes, Reptiles and Amphibians, Birds, and Mammals. Martin looks at how these collections have been interpreted over time, tracing the shift away from a nineteenth-century presentation of nature as something ripe for exploitation to a more contemporary view of natural communities as complex, interconnected, and deserving of conservation.

With 175 color and black-and-white photographs, A Long Look at Nature is both an engaging introduction to the museum and a striking visual tribute to its collections. The book celebrates North Carolina nature in all its diversity and highlights the museum's crucial role in interpreting North Carolina's natural heritage. ... Read more

Amazon.com
For all its dirt, smog, and alienation, the industrial revolution brought with it a strangely graceful beauty. The collections of London's Science Museum include 250 years' worth of records of the changes wrought by Watt and his ilk, and its Collections Research head Robert Bud has culled the most interesting and lovely to present in Inventing the Modern World: Technology Since 1750. This large, well-designed book is organized in roughly chronological sections with titles like "Inventing Accuracy" and "The Age of the Consumer."

The pages contain contemporary photographs of industrial conditions, shots of models and preserved technology, diagrams, and paintings showing the influence of manufacturing on fine art. Look at Charles Babbage's analytical engine, examine the first telephone directory and actuarial tables, and see the Concorde and the pill in their larger contexts. The book's second strength, after the richness of its images, is its transcendence of the notion that technology is use-neutral; napalm is mentioned alongside a war-resistance poster. This openness, far from sparking flames of neo-Luddism, rescues science from its see-no-evil defenders, who have sacrificed their credibility on the altar of denial.Who would have thought that a coffee-table book might raise consciousness?Inventing the Modern World can do just that, bringing pro- and anti-tech alike to a joint awareness of the dangerous poetics of machine organization. --Rob LightnerBook Description
Chronicles the technological inventions that have changed our lives since 1750.

Drawing on the Science Museum's own picture library and the legendary resources of the Hulton Getty Collection, Inventing the Modern World explores, in over 450 images and text, the relationship between human beings and their technological inventions. Beginning in 1750 with improvements in iron and cotton production and the harnessing of steam, this fascinating book chronicles the rise of technology and the staggering effect it has had on our world. From the steam train to the space shuttle, from the electric light to the atomic bomb, from TV to the PC and IT, inventions and their consequences are enjoyably explored. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

making modernity
The four authors, Science Museum curators Simon Niziol, Tim Boon, Andrew Nahum and Robert Bud have done a first-rate job in surveying such a wide scope of technological history. Underpinning the work is the proposition that this is 'real' history. It charts world-changing shifts in technology ranging from diesel engines to contraception - changes which are every bit as important as those recorded in the kind of political history that is taught in school. ... Read more

Book Description