tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post8718566232169908852..comments2023-11-03T08:02:25.369-04:00Comments on AmericanScience: A Team Blog: The Field Museum Cuts Basic ResearchDavid Roth Singermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12841041983824755867noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post-73646323509140720242012-12-27T16:06:59.934-05:002012-12-27T16:06:59.934-05:00I agree with you, Lukas: sometimes one can be too ...I agree with you, Lukas: sometimes one can be too distant. Many of us carry that same ambivalence about science you expressed. I came to history of science in an era of critique, and see the critical stance as something that helps keep science honest. But I also love nature--and therefore the sciences that study it--and we live in a different age now. Science needs defending in a way it didn't seem to in the late 1970s and early 1980s (except for evolution). Evolution and climate change are only the most famous twin objects of current attack; environmental protection and technology assessment are two other areas where federal and state governments have either reduced their levels of scientific expertise or not allowed them to speak as experts. <br /> <br />Museum science has a special place in my heart, and in my research program. As a non-Americanist primarily, my perspective is somewhat different than yours, since many of the museums I've worked on existed before the boom in mass museum education of the late 19thC. It has always seemed to me that the splitting up of the research collection from the public collection, which made such eminent sense to so many European curators in the 1860s-1880s and thereafter, was in fact something of a Faustian bargain. Research could now (in the new museums of the late 19thC) take place away from the distractions of the lay visitor, and the public collections found a new mission in educating the mass public. But the cost of this privacy--so necessary for curators to get their scientific work done--was invisibility. I fear that what we're seeing now at the Field Museum is in part an unexpected consequence of that choice. Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13229353200285522643noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post-47947603285318360282012-12-23T11:45:52.988-05:002012-12-23T11:45:52.988-05:00Lukas, this is a very meaningful summary of 2 cent...Lukas, this is a very meaningful summary of 2 centuries of American natural history. You mentioned Marshall Field, but Smithson, Peabody, Bishop, and Carnegie were other examples of this trend. Beyond the incomparable loss of the engine that created the Field Museum's collections and served and instructed scientists and the public, I am afraid these cuts to science signal a troubling sociological development: the 1% (who created these cultural icons in the 18th and 19th centuries) no longer feel the need to legitimize their wealth. Cultural institutions like the Field Museum now rely on attenuating lines of support from an aging generation of socially responsible philanthropistsAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post-49858680803040509442012-12-21T21:48:58.947-05:002012-12-21T21:48:58.947-05:00I agree with Dan's point about "science a...I agree with Dan's point about "science at work." Natural history (and other science) museums display *both* the products of scientific inquiry (in the form of curated objects from the natural world, say) and its processes, the why and how not just of how those objects were curated, but what they mean for scientific knowledge. <br /><br />Interestingly, the "behind-the-scenes" work of art museums is dedicated to preservation, curation, and research in much the same way. The twist is that, while natural history museums entail "science at work," it's less often the case (at least in any common-sense way) that art museums entail "art at work."<br /><br />Lukas, I know you're interested in this comparison. Does that sound right? Hankhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02841787256060612291noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post-74108992063563859522012-12-21T06:11:49.962-05:002012-12-21T06:11:49.962-05:00Lukas: thanks for drawing our attention in this di...Lukas: thanks for drawing our attention in this direction. I've signed the petition.<br /><br />For me, the loss of the research side of the museum and the idea of creating a "Science and Education" department in its place points toward an unhelpful turn in museum practice---one that narrows the ways that museums can showcase and promote the life of the mind.<br /><br />I *love* children's museums and interactive science museums---I should say that first. Finding new ways to interpret and explain science matters a great deal. But I worry when the move toward experiential, conceptual learning hides or even displaces the disciplined activity that creates scientific knowledge and makes museums possible in the first place. Having research divisions in science museums matters, in other words, because some of the public deserves to have the opportunity to see science at work.<br /><br />Your recent <i>Isis</i> piece, Lukas, on dinosaurs at the AMNH convinces me that researchers and curators add a great deal to museum life and that their museum work has important effects on their science. When museums no longer have scientists to create "mixed media" assemblages, we'll all be the poorer for it.Danhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05217832960135325575noreply@blogger.com