Of Science Museums

8/11/2019 Of Science Museums

1/8

Of Science in Museums

So p h i a Vack i m es

M

useum s as we know them today are con-

sidered to be truly modern institutions.

In them notions of ethnicity, nation

building, and pro gress have been played out contin-

uously since the nineteenth century. Although

linked histo rically to Renaissance cab inets of curi-

osities, they have long since ceased being places

where wonders of nature were accumulated and

displayed for the irown sake. Ev entually, the collec-

tions of dissected butterflies, fossils and other curi-

osities were separated from the materials that

would become the cornerstone of art m useum col-

lections, i.e., port ra its of kings, placid landscapes,

architectural m arvels, and canvases portraying the

mythical acts of gods and goddesses.

Local historical museums and ethnographic

collections took new shapes a nd directions. In m any

cases they became involved in the mak ing of patr i-

otic imagery of emerging nation

states.

Those mu se-

ums that began appearing in nineteenth-century

postcolonial states emulated their European coun-

terparts in many ways, but they sought, most im-

portantly,todisplay an ethnic and national identity

distinct from the background they all once shared.

In this manner museums became political spaces

where a totaliz ing classificatory grid[which],could

be applied with endless flexibility to anything un-

der the state's real or contemplated control: peo-

ples, regions , rel ig ions , languages , products ,

mo num ents and so forth (Anderson 1991:184).

Science museum s had a different development.

The mysterious collections alchemists and physi-

cists am assed , which w ere once protected by scien-

tific,

ethno logical or gentlemen's societies, became

a t t a c h e d t o r e s e a r c h i n s t i t u t i o n s li k e t h e

Jagiellonian Unive rsity in Poland, the Ashmolean

Museum at Oxford University, or the Museo

Naciona l in Mexico. Museums of science, which in-

cluded mathematics, physics, chemistry, electric-

ity, and archaeological collections were regarded as

centers of pur e knowledge and considered devoid of

political motives. These views held for most of the

nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Volumes have been written about the impor-

tance of museums in modern societies. However,

and ama zingly enough, even tho ugh scientific activ-

ity defines m uch of our everyda y ac tivities and the

overall thr us t of W estern cu lture, science museums

remain largely unanalyzed. Why have we anthro-

pologists and other cultu ral thi nk ers ignored them?

It is urgent to ask whether or not science exhibits

have political motives behind them, especially

when it is obvious that they are an integral part of

the public image of science. Are we being lazy or

derelict in our dutyto society? Are we afraid todeal

with the crises of rep rese ntati on, cu ltural inter-

pretation, and issues of conflicting epistemologies

that they represent (Nader 1999:20)?

I will sketch a synopsis of the relations hip t ha t

anthropology has borne to museum studies and

then I will propose the issue of science as a particu-

lar type of culture. In drawing such comparisons I

hope to illust rate how mu ch of the issue s in anthro-

pological literature are directly relevant when dis-

cussing scientific practice and its ideologically

driven museum represe ntation. As experts in deal-

ing with diverse worldviews it is critical th atwe re -

alize

how

science mu seum s contrib ute iconographic

and stylistic elements to an exhibitionary mes-

sagea message tha t reflects the social functions

of ideologiespatterns of symbolic formulations

and f igura t ive l an gu ag es of power (Geertz

1973:212-13).

Brief History of Museum C rit ique

M useum s have been critical sites of anthropo-

logical research since the m odern formation of the

discipline in the 19th cen tury (Nad er

1999:1).

They

us um

nthropology26 1):3-10. Copyright 2003 American Anthropological Association.


2/8

MUS UM NTHROPOLOGYVOLUME26NUMBER

have consistently provided the field with fresh and

fertile ground for the developm ent of our discipline .

Since Franz Boas designed the exhibition halls at

the American M useum of Natura l History (AMNH)

in New York City, notions of culture have been con-

sidered an d played out in over a century of mu seum

exhibits. Over time, however, the intense relation-

ship between museums and anthropology waned,

and the intere st in the academic value, history, a nd

purpose of these ins titut ion s w as neglected. As our

discipline evolved, th e m ythical times when Fra nz

Boas at th e AMNH in New York, A.L. Kroeber at

the Anthropology M useum at the U niversity of Cal-

ifornia at Berkeley and others worked at museums

were forgotten. The rich h istory of the inte nse rela-

tionships between museums and anthropologists

became covered with dust and shoved into sealed

containers wa iting to be deaccessioned. The rift be-

tween museum anthropology and academic anth ro-

pology made mu seum s unlikely sites for stu dy since

they were considered step-institutions of the aca-

demic world. Museum curators who shared aca-

demic appointm ents we re seen by colleagues to be

engaged in less respe ctab le and intellectually de-

ma nding activity and tied to writing elem enta ry

textbooks with a libera l use of visual aids (Jones

1995:202).

Museums recovered their importance within

anthropological studies in the 1980's and 1990's as

the natur e of ethnographic authority, the crea tion

of trad it ion s, the exam ina tion of colonial an d

postcolonial bias in the repre senta tion of othe r cul-

tures, the ethical responsibilities of anthropolo-

gists, and the epistemological status of analytical

categories were challenged in a post Civil Rights,

postcolonial era. Benedict Anderson's analysis of

the c reation of postcolonial s tate s in

Imagined Com-

munities

(f irs t pub l ished in 1983) eve ntu al ly

showed us how muse um s could be sites for the cre-

ation of distinct po litical im aginations. N ewly cre-

ated nation states utilized m useums as showcases

for the development of political unity directed at an

upper middle class that internalized and reified

specific visions of patriotic cohesion and political

power. A whole generation of museum critics has

been influenced by An derson 's work, which shows

how, together with the novel, the newspaper, the

census and the map, muse um s served as historical

maps or nation building blueprints that wove an-

cient prestige to the future ideals of emerging

postcolonial ruling classes. Museums becam e pa rt

of the formal ideological program me of mod ern

so-

cial constructions (Anderson 1991:181).

Flora K aplan's edited volume

Museums and the

Making ofOurselves (1994) attempted an expan-

sion on Anderson's idea, providing numerous case

studiestoillustratehowm useum s, as political arti-

facts, had indeed legitimized power in nations as

apparently dissimilar as Mexico and Greece. How-

ever, th is volume did not accom plish all it set o ut to

do .

Since then, views about their purpose have

greatly differed. For less optimistic authors they

are spaces where ideological legitimation or cul-

tu ra l encroachment und er the guise of civilizing

missions took place. Allison Arieff described muse-

um s as sites for the production and appro priationof

indigenous history built on culturally biased no-

tions of objectivity, progress, and universality

(Arieff 1995:78). Other critics, such as Tony

Be nnett (1988), have portrayed mu seumsasspaces

where the s tate submits th e citizen to a hegemonic

gaze through a Foucauldian exhibitionary com-

plex akin to the asylum, the clinic, and the prison;

spaces where discursive formations and new tech-

nologies of the state are continuously envisioned

and enacted.

Once exhibits were revea led as ca rrying specific

cultural and political messages criticism flour-

ished. Academic and political notions were chal-

lenged in written form as well as in the realm of

performance art and the way artifacts w ere being

represe nted. One of the first issues tobevigorously

debated was what was perceived as institutional-

ized, exhibitionary racism. The exhibitPrimitivism

in 20th Cen tury Art: Affinities of the Tribal andthe

Modern,

he ld a t the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)

in New York in1984elicited a flurry of negative

re-

sponses to th e term primitive. The legacy of the

sixties, and budding political awareness as well as

correctness, characterized the term and the mu-

seum 's politics as an example of museological ma-

nipu lation (McEvilley 1984:59). The exhibit was

accused of being a space whe re non-W estern art and

people were treated as less tha n huma n, less than

culturalas shadows of a culture, their selfhood,

the ir O therness , wrun g out of them (McEvilley

1984:59).

This position was taken up by numerous au-

tho rs as well as by ar tist s who challenged Western

exhibitionary notions. Various a rtist s contributed

to challenging museum a nd c uratorial cultural au-

thority. Fred Wilson's work directly spoke to an


3/8

apartheid state of affairs in the art world with

pieces titled Stolen from the Zonge Tribe, 1899,

Priv ate Collection, in insta llation s such as

Mining

the

Museum,

andRooms

with a V iew.

In both cases

white/black, m useum /public notions of power were

subverted. In Rooms With a View,the public could

stare back at mannequins, which donned MoMA's

and the M etropolitan Museum of Art's famous uni-

forms. The tren d continued with the work of perfor-

m a n c e a r t i s t s C oc o F u s c o a n d G u i l l e r m o

Gomez-Pena, who, by placing themselves inside a

cage at the Am erican M useum of Natural History,

s i g n a l ed d i s g u s t w i t h t h e ap p ro p r i a t i o n o f

non-Western objects into Western capitalist sys-

tems of values and the violen t dism issal of the

voices of those they claimed to celebrate (Clifford

1997:200).

Aesthetic considerations also led to conce ptual

revisions of the n atu re of m ate ria l culture. The par-

adigm that defines an object as art or artifact was

thoroughly deconstructed. Susan Vogel's exhibits

at the Center for African Art ra ttle d the e ntren che d

notions of primitivism with exhibits that centered

African m ateria ls in the tren dy SoHo conceptualart

circuit. These subversions reverberated through-

out the museum community. Eurocentrically moti-

va ted concep t s tha t had con t r ibu ted to and

continuously played out the notion tha t African art

represented the lower rung of an evolutionary

course of art h istory were questioned. Insta llation s

such as Pers pective s: An gles on African A rt,

which was one of the first to presen t non-W estern

ar t from a ran ge of viewpoints, including th a t of Af-

rican art ists started to change the t ide (Jones

1993:206). The ART/Artifact exhibit curated by

Vogel displaced notions of mode rnity and prim itiv-

ism, displaying African objects in non-traditional

manners.

A

shift in think ing wa s triggered by wh at

is known in ar t circles as Vogel's Net a fisher-

man's artifact exhibited as a bundle rathe r th an as

an ethnogra phic artifact in the style of the C entr al

Park institution from w here it w as borrowed. The

SoHo locale continued to host challenges to the

Western cultural coding norm of museums. Ex-

hibits such as

Contemporary Art

Gallery,

C uriosity

Room;Natural History Museum Diorama;

and a

videotape of an African ceremony lay bare the

primitivising, exhibitionary conventions used in

art as wel l as anthropology museums (Jones

1993:206). The ma in m erit of the se exhibits wa s the

beg inning of th e erosion of th e c lassic opposition be-

tween art and anthropology (Jones 1993:207). But

others disagree. James Clifford, for example, ar-

gues there was no real change, and that these exer-

c i ses were mere ly aes the t i c i zed sc ien t i sm

(1988:203).

The political ev ents of the 1980's also allowed

for the emp owering of Native groups rega rding th e

display of their cultu res. The b ulk of anthropologi-

cal litera ture on museum s lies here and centers on

the rep res enta tion of the other and local politics.

Native voices appear in abundance and take center

stage in crafting indigenous, self-representations.

Exemplifying this move is the study of Canadian

Native voices done by Jam es Clifford in

Routes:

Traveland Translation in the Late Twentieth Cen-

tury(1997). In his chapter Four Northwest Coast

Museums: Travel Reflections, he describes differ-

ent museum sites as tactical approaches in the

creation of new interpretive categories (or transla-

tion devices) of art, culture, politics and history

(Clifford [1991] 1997:212).

A second powerful example of this movement

was the emergence of African American

voices

and

politics. African Am ericans appe ared in full force at

the National Museum of American History in the

exhibit From Farm to Factory. The exhibit was

curated by the then di rector of the museum,

Spencer Crew, an African American historian who

not only directed the exhaustive collection of slave

era a rtifacts (previously a bsent from the Sm ithso-

nian's collections), but who also created powerful

devices through which viewers could interact with

history.

W hites Only and Coloreds

Only

signs on

doorways a t critical junc tures in the show dr am ati-

cally dem arca ted the plight of people of color in the

United S tate s. The presence of Ku Klux Klan gar-

men ts, including a baby's cap and carriage, was a n

acrid testimo ny of the legacy of terro r in Am erica.

How m useum s engage with and respondtocom-

munities with vested interests was brought to the

forefront with the passage of the Native American

Graves Protection and Repatria tion Act (NAGPRA)

in 1990. NAGPRA requires museum s and federal

agencies to work with Native groups to determ ine

the disposition of human remains and sacred and

cultural objects taken from federal landsorlocated

in museum collections . . . [It] perma nently altered

the relationship between museums and Native

Am ericans (Lomawalma 2000:41). Today tribal mu -

seums, community centers, and other multicultura l


4/8

6 MUS EUM NTHROPOLOGY VOLUME 26 NUMBER 1

spaces continuously challenge the status quo with

exh ibits at national and local venues.

The relationship between people and objects

and the vivid contrast of meanings that are con-

fer red upon them by different cultural groups have

been highlighted by a literature that explores is-

su es of contex tualization, commodification,

d ec o n t e x t u a l i z a t i o n , an d t h e s t ru g g l e s t o

re si tu at e the various mean ings of objects. The vol-

u me , The Social Life of Things (1986) edited by

Arju n App adurai, gave new significance to the no-

tion of an object's life and the trajectory of th at life.

Th e context and the social arena s in which folk

ob-

jects and human remains operate take new mean-

ings en route to museum exhibits. Comm odities, as

m us eu m objects often are , represe nt very complex

socia l forms an d distr ibution s of know ledge... tech-

nic al, social, aesthe tic and so forth . . . T he produc-

tion of knowledge th atisread into the commodity is

quite different from the consumption of knowledge

th at is read

from

he comm odity (App adurai [1986]

2000:41).

Museological critique owes a trem endous debt

to primatology and its intersection with feminist

studies. During the 1980's a generation of women

scientists interested in primate research directly

cha lleng ed th e male-centric scientific notions in the

discipline. Jane Goodall , Dian Fossey, Jeanne

A ltm an n, Alison Richard and Thelma Rowell devel-

oped im po rtan t epistemological critiques of biologi-

cal functionalism. Fem inist-centered theo ry did not

merely intend to correct male-centered models of

primate behavior but directly challenged the en-

tre nc he d notions of biological essen tialism.

Interse cting with museum studies and illustra-

tive of these new theoretical formulations is Donna

H ara w ay 's essay Teddy Bear Patria rchy : Taxi-

de rm y in the G arden of Ed en, New York City,

1908-1 936, first published in 1984. This piece was

in st ru m en ta l in offering a specific viewpoint of'sci-

enc e' as a window on the world of na ture (Schudson

1997:383). Hara way was innovative in the way she

tre at ed a museum exhibit as the readable text

(Schu dson 1997:383) of a ma le-centered purs uit of

po w er . The p iece i s v iewe d today as a b i t

long-winded , pronouncing central mo ral tru ths

ab ou t the moral state (Schudson 1997:385) of

white male elites belonging to the American Mu-

seum of Natural History's board of trustees and

benefactors . I t nevertheless remains essent ial

re ad in g not only for its feminist critique but also as

an important contribution to museum studies. It

squarely pointedtothe fact that m use um s. . . have

ideologies (Gran a quoted in Schud son 1997:385).

The idea that traditions institutionalize power and

privi lege was made abundant ly clear through

Hara way 's dem onstration of how class, race and

gender were determining elements in the creation

of the d ioramas of the Hall of African M am mals.

Museum stud ies also

owe

a serious debt to those

writers who viewed th e co nstruction of thebodyas a

social entity. N ancy Schep er-Hug hes and M arga ret

M. Lock's essay The Mindful Body: A Prolegome-

non to Future Work in Medical Anthropology

(1987), contests Western assumptions of medical

theory and show tha t th e body can be

viewed:

(1) as

a phenomenally experienced individual

body-self;

(2) as a social body, a natural symbol for thinking

about relationships am ong nat ur e, society and cul-

ture; and (3) as a body politic, an artifact of social

and political control (Scheper-Hughes and Lock

1987:6). Anchored inaparticular place and time the

body is culturally produced. This argument led to

various studies of repr ese ntatio ns of th e body in th e

art s and in exhibitionary cultu re. Some particu-

larly relevant works dealing with wom en'sbodiesin

science are Londa Schiebinger's

Nature s Body:

Genderin the Making of Mod ern Science,

(1995) a

genealogy of taxonomical classification and use of

sexual metaphors during the scientific revolution;

Ancestral Images: The Iconography of Human Ori-

gins, (1998) by Stepha nie Moser, looks at the cul-

tural biases in artistic renderings of evolutionary

theory;

The Quick and theDead: Artists andAnat

omy,

(1998) by Dea nna Pethe rbridge and Ludm illa

Jordanova and

Body Criticism: Imaging

the Unseen

in Enlightenment Art and Medicine,

(1993) by

B a r b a r a M a r i a S t a f f o r d , i l l u s t r a t e t h e

nonlinguistic para digm s tha t science has used in

a radical shi f t f rom a text based to a v isu-

ally-centered culture . Cathe rine Cole took the dis-

cussion straight to museum exhibit practices in

Women,

Reproduction

and

etuses

at C hicago s Mu-

seum of

Science

and Industry

(1993).

The Role of the Science Museum

Soif the role museums have ta ken lately is t ha t

of culture as a self-reflective space, w ha t do they tel l

us ab out ourselves? About politics? About science?

About science in mu seums? In Am erican Anthro -

pologists and American Society (1969), Eric Wolf

noted that contemporary American society lacked


5/8

urgent self-criticism. Laura Nader continues to see

this lack and describes the present moment in

museography as one where ther e is a need for ur-

gent political and epistemological que stioning

(1999:5). Although there have been great advances

in cu l tu ra l and an th ro po lo g ica l c r i t iqu e of

ethnographic and a rt mu seum s, and of certa in sci-

ences like medicine, some subjects have remained

out-of-bounds for the epistemological questioning

that Nader proposes. While it is true that many

museographic issues or political positions have

been engaged in creating alte rna te discourses, and

pol i t ical groups have empowered themselves

enough to share representational modes in major

museum venues science has rema ined an inexora-

ble Rubicon.

Already in the 1970's and 1980's, as a re su lt of

the Cold War, intellectuals had attem pted a critical

view ofAm erican scientific ideology. The

field

of cul-

tural studiesisnot new, and an thropologists, Marx-

ists,feminists, constructivists, de constructionists,

have approached science as a pa rticula r c ulture for

a long time now. So why ha sn't ther e been a political

critique of science m useum s?

Science museums need to be looked at as sites

where the dynamics of bounda ry creation, power

and knowledge are played out (Nader 1996:12).

Perhapsoneof the reason s this h as not been done is

that we had not yet achieved the de tachm ent, the

experience, and the critical maturity necessary to

undertake (Nad er 1999:8) such a project. We first

needed to . . . problematize the idea of the 'Oth er' in

order to recognize our roles as n ativ es in our own

so-

ciety (Nader 1999:8).

In the Uni ted States science is general ly

equated with progress. Prese nting a divergent view

proved nearly fatal for Science in American Life,

an exhibit which opened at the Nationa l M useumof

American History at the Sm ithsonian I nstitu tion in

1994 and discussed by Arth ur Molella in th is iss ue.

The cura torial staff focused on scientific im pac t

instead, and urged the public to think about the

meaning of the contraceptive pill, the atomic bomb,

food additives, scientific education, coal tar prod-

ucts,

synthetic fabrics, pain ts, aspirin, and the ef-

fect of pesticides. Obscure inventors, vaccines and

DNA, medical innovations, dyes for blue jean s, r a-

dio circuits, and h ard water in A merican comm uni-

ties were all present in the exhibit. This might all

seem quite obvious material to portray since the

show was about American life. However the show

el ic i t ed t he i re of sc ien t i f i c an d po l i t i ca l

com mun ities such as the A merican Chemical Soci-

ety, Veterans of Foreign Wars, and the American

Asso ciation for the Advancem ent of Science.Afall-

out shelter and a set of photographs of victims of the

nuclear explosions of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

brou ght t hr ea ts of staff firings and a C ongressional

investigation of the curatorial staff. The worry

among some scientists on the museum's advisory

board w as th at the shelter would sta nd out as a sym-

bol of scientific evil, an arg um en t th at echoed the

Science Wars of the mid-nineties (Molella and

Step hen s 1995:9). It is lam entable th at only threeor

four m onographs have been w ritte n about this ex-

hibit, and that it will be torn down in a couple of

ye ars because of surreptitious building remodel-

ing.

The assumption of the inherent superiority of

modern science has remained an article of faith

w ithi n our cu lture (Nader 1999:8). Anthropology as

a discipline h as m atured and is now capable of tack-

ling within m useums wha t various anthropologists

hav e been tack ling in other are na s for years. Sadly

enough, science in museums has not been tapped.

Two auth ors , however, have dealt w ith science and

its exhibitionary sphere. Hugh Gusterson has ex-

am ined yearly exhibits and com mem orations of nu-

clear tests a t LosAlamosin his articles Talesof the

City (1998), which deals with exhibiting the nu-

clear attack at Hiroshima, and Nuclear Tourism

(2001); Dorothy Nelkin approached DNA as a cul-

tu ra l icon (1995). Nelkin's treatm en t of the mate-

rial is different from most work on the body for it

focuses strong ly on science as ideology and bound-

aries of power rather than on artistic renderings.

The utility of boundary-work is not limited to

demarcations of science from non-science (Gieryn

1983:792), nor is it limited to gende r stu dies, icono-

graphic analysis, or the study of ethnic communi-

ties.O ur complex societies need a closer look at th e

stra ins and interests tha t guide the selection of

one or another repertoire for public presentation

(Gieryn 1983:792). Herein lies the importance of

studying science museums.

Museums help mold much of what the general

public understands as and about science. They act

in manners akintolaboratories w here information

is processed and reconfigured into useful cultural

artifacts. In laboratories some facts are reified as

scientific knowledge, while others are discarded.

Science museum s help transform a public quest for


6/8

8 MUSEUM NTHROPOLOGY VOLUM E 26 NUMBER 1

informa tion into acceptable w ays of knowing, of

be-

having, of und ersta ndin g natu re. Museums are so-

cial labo rator ies where enhanced environments

set up correspondences between n atural orders and

social ones (Knorr-Cetina 1999:26). In laboratories

facts are processed, detached from their natu ral

env iron m ent, moved onto a symbol based technol-

ogy an d conve rted into scales of social order ju st

as they are in m useum s (Knorr-Cetina 1999:28).

If science indeed is capab le of engaging (Fran k-

lin 1995:177) and thus altering public discourse ,

and if the an aly sis of sites of the creation of ideology

is one of the ideals of anthropology, then it is time

tha t science museum s as publicspacesare taken up

as new sites for research.

Of Sc ience in Museums

The American triumphalism that Eric Wolf

critiqued h as be en ma de quite appa rent in our lack

of que stion ing c ur rent political and scientific en ter-

prise . It tak es going abroad to see tha t exhibits on

science th at inclu de social critique are possible. The

new W ellcome Wing of th e Science Museum in

Lon-

don, is a point in case. Genetic engineering is se-

verely que stioned again st a backdrop of invited art

works that sort out questions of social impact and

ethics. Here and Now: Contemporary Scienceand

Technologyin Museums andScienceC enters,edited

by Farnelo and Carding and published by the Sci-

ence Mu seum in London (1996), deals with and re-

flects on the past achievements of scientists and

technologists by imp roving th e coverage of the work

they a re doing today. The auth ors are not shy in

dis-

cussing iss ues such as how visitors would react to

controve rsial biotechnology exhibits. For example:

How would the public, so bent on the promise of

spare body pa rt s gen erated by genetic research, re-

act to actually viewing a hum an ear growing on the

back of a labo rator y m ouse? or an interactive game

called The Sp erm ina tor, in which schoolchildren

useapinball m achine to learn about pregnancy and

infertility?

British Museum's director Robert Anderson

(previously a t th e Science Museum) has repeatedly

expressed how perplexed he is about the lack of

analysis of the material culture of science in this

country. Useful points of departure are the papers

in

The History of Technology at the Science Museum,

London (1996) also published by the Science Mu-

seum in London a nd edited by Insley and Bud. The

pap ers de al with r esear ch and collecting agendas of

science museums as well as the nature of science

exhibits.Somearticles a lso reflectonthe collabora-

tion that goes on among American, British, and

German science museum s. Sharon M acdonald ha s

also broken new ground with an ethnog raphic ac-

count of the goings on in th e creation of science ex-

hibits with her volume

Behind the Scenes at the

Science Museum (2002); however, she does not

study up.

Science museums in the United S tate s hav e re-

mained attached to merely presen ting ma terials as

wonders of nature or as technological feats. We

must ask ourselves what is left out and what is it

telling us about ideological bound aries. Millions a re

spent throughout the United S tates in the develop-

ment of science centers, yet we continue to disre-

gard such enterprises as out of the realm of

anthropology. The city of Tucson, Arizona, for in-

stance, is gearing up for a ten-year project, which

will be a complex tha t not only revitalize s it s down-

town area butalsoincludes art, culture and science

as part of its mandate. However, will the science

center include an anthropology section? Will it dis-

cuss solar energy as a source of power? Or w ill it ad-

dress genetically modified organisms? What about

an exhibit on telesurveillance? These notions are

not so farfetched considering that seventy percent

of our foods are genetically modified, or that popu-

lar culture ha s so effectively shown us Big Broth er's

entertainment value.

The American Anthropological Association's

Council for Museum Anthropology hosted a session

on science mu seum s at its

2001

ann ual meeting in

Washington, D.C. This session, titled Science and

Cu ltural Boundaries, wasfiveyears in the making.

Tom Gieryn, Indian a Unive rsity, spoke to the chal-

lenges of telling the trut h at m useum s. The bound-

aries blurred by the enigmatic Museum for J ura ssic

Technology are extrao rdinary exam ples of such dif-

ficulty. Art Molella, of the N ationa l Museum of

American History, Smithsonian Institution, re-

flectedonhis curatorial work in Science in Am eri-

canLife. He discussed wh at w riting th e sc ript for a

responsible national science exhibit m eans a nd how

th at effort became a long and winding nigh tm are .

Hugh Gusterson,whoin the m idst of becoming a fa-

ther, contributed a marvelously sh arp and w itty yet

macabre paper on Nuclear Tourism. Tracey Dye,

who helped organize the panel, dramatically up-

dated the discussion Haraway began alm ost tw enty

yearsagoon dioramas at th e American M useum of


7/8

Natural His tory . My own essay took Dorothy

Nelkin's ta ck on DNA as cultural icon andviewsThe

Genomic Revolution at the American Museum of

N atu ra l H istor y as an exhibit overwhelmed by ref-

erences to obscurantism. Enid Schildkrout served

as our discus san t. Her critique was fundam ental to

our overall o rganization and intellectual direction.

The papers presented at the session that appear in

this issue ar e by Molella, Vackimes, and

Dye.

In ad-

dit ion to those, we have added Akiko Kanaya

Mikochi's p iece, which is an exam ple of fresh writ-

ing in a sea of obtuse academic referencing.

The t h ru st of this volume is to strategically

po-

sition science mu seum s within the study of power,

hegemony , and a particular aspect of We stern ide-

ology. Sc ience is not devoid of motives. Science,

which is not as a ttachedto truth as we might have

once tho ug ht it was, ha s lost its effectiveness as

monitor of reality. It is

now drifting towards its decline, its civic fall

from grace. . . . As a panic phenomenon-a fat

concealed by the success of its devices and

toolscontemporary science is losing itself in

the very excessiveness of its alleged progress.

Much as a stra tegy, offensive can wear itself out

by th e scale of its tactic al con que sts, so

techno-science is gradually wrecking th e schol-

arly resources of all knowledge (Virilo 2000:2).

Science mu seum s are ripe for serious scrutiny.

Are wew illingtotackle themor not?Or shallwelet

them con tinu e a slippage into the future of propa-

ganda ? (Bro dsky quoted in Virilio (2002:15), tha t

propagation of faithand progress [which] is

merely a mystical displacementthe frantic

dep loym ent of a force of physical repulsion and

expulsion of man out of that divine Creation

which ha d u p until then been for him, the world

over, the beginning of all reality[?] (Virilio

2002:15).

c k n o w le d g m e n t s

To Dr. A lan D undes for everlasting inspiration

and a notion that there are underlying motives in

every hum an undertaking, and to Dr. Laura Nader

who pointed th e way. To the founding ideals of the

Gradu ate Fa culty. Many thankstoChristina K reps

for her editorial assistance.

R e f e re n c e s C i te d

Anderson, B.

1991[1983] Imagined Com mu nities. New York: Verso.

Appad urai, A., ed.

2000 [1986] The Social Life of Th ings: Com modities in

Cultural Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press.

Arieff A.

1995 Different Sort of (P)Reservation: Some Tho ughts

on the National Museum of the American Indian. Mu-

seum A nthropology 19(2):78-90

Bennett, T.

1988 The Exhibitionary Complex. New Form ation s 4

(Spring): 73-102.

Clifford, J.

1988 Predicament of Cu lture . Cam bridge: Ha rvar d

University Press.

1991 Four Northwest Coast Mus eums. In Exhibiting

Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display,

Ivan Karp and Steven Levine, eds. Pp. 212-34. Washing-

ton, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press.

1997 Routes: Travel and Trans lation in the Late Twen-

tieth Century. Boston: Harvard University P ress .

Cole, C.

1993 Sex and Dea th on Display: Wom en, Reprod uction

and Fetuses at Chicago's Museum of Science and Indus-

try. Drama Review 37(l):43-60.

Daston, L. and K. Park

2001 Wonders and the Order of N atu re. New

York:

Zone

Books.

Farnelo, G. and J. Carding, eds.

1996 Here and Now: Con tempo rary Science and Tech-

nology in Museums and Science Ce nter s. Proceedings of a

conference held at the Science Mu seum , London . London:

Science Museum .

Franklin, S.

1995 Science as Cu lture, Cu lture s of Science. An nua l

Review of Anthropology 24:163-18 4.

Geertz, C.

1973 The Interp retatio n of Cu ltur es. New York: Basic

Book.

Gieryn, T.

1984 Boundary Work and th e Dem arcatio n of Science,

Strains and Interests. Professional Ideologies of Scien-

t i s t s . Theme issue, American Sociological Review

48:791-792.

Gusterson, H.

2001 Nuclear Tourism. Paper presented at the panel

Science and its Boundaries, Am erican A nthropological

Association Annual Meeting, Washin gton D.C. Novem ber

29.

1998 Tales of the City. Technology Review. 98(6):56-57.

Haraway, D.

1984 Teddy Bear Patriarchy : Taxidermy in the Garden

of E d e n , N ew Y o r k C i t y , 1 9 0 8 - 1 9 3 6 . In C u l -

ture/Power/History. D irks, Nicholas , Geoff Eley et

a l.

eds.

Pp. 49-95.

Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Pres s.


8/8

1 MUSEUM NTHROPOLOGY VOLUME26 NUMBER

Insley,J. and R. Bud

1996 The History of Technology at the Science Mu seum ,

London 1993-1996. Science Museum Papers in the His-

tory of Technology (1). London: Science Mu seum .

Jones,A. L.

1993 Exploding Cano ns: The Anthropology of Mu-

se um s. A nnual Review of Anthropology (22):201-220.

Kaplan,

F

1994 Museums

and the

Making

of

Ourselves. London:

Leicester University Press.

Knorr-Cetina,K.

1999 What is a Laboratory? In Epistemic Cultures:

How theSciences Make Knowledge. Cambridge: H arva rd

University Press.

Lomawalma,H.

2000 NAGPRA

at

Ten: Examining

a

Decade of the

Na-

tive American Graves Protection andRepatriationAct.

M useum News. (September/October):41-69.

Macdonald,S.

2002 Behind

the

Scenes

at the

Science Museum.

New

York: Berg Publishers.

McEvilley,T.

1984 Doctor Lawyer Indian Chief.Primitivismin20th

Century Art at the Museum of Modern Art in 1984.

Artforum 23(3):54-61.

Mollela, A.andC. Stephens

Science

and its

Stakeholders:

The

Making

of

Sci-

enceinAm erican Life.InExploring ScienceinMuseums.

S. Pearce,ed.Pp. 95-106. London: Athlone.

Moser,S.

1998 Ancestral

Images:

The Iconography of Hu ma nOr-

igins. NewYork:Cornell University Pre ss.

Nader,L.

1999 Towards anEthnographyofMuseums:New Di-

rections from the Museum Experience. FOCAAL.Aca-

demic Anthropology.

The

Netherlands.

1996 Naked Science: Anthropological Inquiry into

Boundaries, Power, and Knowledge. London and New

York: Routledge.

Nelkin,D. andM .S.Lindee

1995 TheDNA Mystique:TheGeneas aCultural Icon.

New York: FreemanandCompany.

Scheper-Hughes,

N. and

M .

M.

Lock

1987

The

Mindful Body:

A

Prolegomenon

to

Future

Work in Medical Anthropology. Medical Anthropology

Quarterly 1(1):6-41.

Schiebinger, L.

1993 Na ture's Body: Gende rin theMakingofModern

Science. Boston: Beacon Pr ess .

Schudson,M.

1997 Cultura l Studies and the Social Constructionof

'Social Construction'. In From Sociology to Cul tural

Studies . El izabeth Long, ed. Pp. 389-395. Maiden:

Blackwell Publishers.

Stafford,

B.

1993 Body Criticism: Imaging the Unseen in Enlighten-

mentArt andM edicine. Boston: MIT Press.

Virilio,P.

2000 The Information Bomb. NewYork:Verso.

2002 Ground Zero.

New

York: Verso.

Wolf Eric

1969 American AnthropologistsandAmerican Society.

In Reinventing Anthropology. Dell Hymes,

ed. Pp.

251-253.

NewYork: P antheon.

S o p h i a V a c k i m e s is currentlya doctor l s tu d e n tin

n t h r o p o l o g y

at the

Gr a d u a te F a c u lty

of the New

S c h o o l

in New

Y o r kCity

She

h o l d s

a M A in

Latin

m e r i c a n S t ud i e s w i tha c o n c e n t r a t i o ninM u s e u m

S tu d ie s f r o m New Y o r k U niv e r s i ty

Documents

Of Science Museums