• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

Displaying “The Natural World” for Public Curiosity: U.S. Science Museum Transformations, from Lewis & Clark to the Exploratorium By Cheryl Ann Holzmeyer A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Ann Swidler, Chair Professor Neil Fligstein Professor John Levi Martin Professor Richard Candida Smith Spring 2012 Displaying “The Natural World” for Public Curiosity: U.S. Science Museum Transformations, from Lewis & Clark to the Exploratorium © 2012 by Cheryl Ann Holzmeyer Abstract Displaying “The Natural World” for Public Curiosity: U.S. Science Museum Transformations, from Lewis & Clark to the Exploratorium by Cheryl Ann Holzmeyer Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology University of California, Berkeley Professor Ann Swidler, Chair This dissertation analyzes the U.S. science museum field over time in order to examine institutional emergence, institutional transformation, and changing patterns of science boundary- work in displaying “the natural world” to publics. It investigates the constitution of the U.S. science museum field via 19th century natural history museums and world’s fairs, and the 20th century transformation of the field by industrial science museums and science center museums. Its theoretical contribution is to underscore the significance of material culture and its spatial dimensions to analyzing institutions, including patterns of boundary-work between publics and science. It argues that industrial science museums and their novel exhibitionary conventions arose as industrial material culture became framed as “applied science,” and as distinct from artifacts in the existing field of natural history museums. In addition, it argues that science center museums distinguished themselves from and proliferated more rapidly than industrial science museums due not only to new constituencies mobilized on their behalf, but also due to their de-emphasis on collections, particularly of rare and historical artifacts. These changes again facilitated new exhibitionary conventions. Thus the emergence, transformation and proliferation of institutions hinge on their material cultural dimensions, on multiple levels. 1 Table of Contents: Chapter 1: Displaying “The Natural World” for Public Curiosity – Museum Genealogies……..4 Chapter 2: Theoretical Overview & Methodological Discussion……………………………….11 Chapter 3: The 19th Century Emergence of the U.S. Science Museum Field: Nautral History, Lusus Naturae and “Science” Boundary-Work………………………………..25 Chapter 4: Civilizing the Machine in the Garden, at the Edge of the Frontier: The U.S. Industrial Museum Movement and Chicago’s Museum of Science & Industry………47 Chapter 5: The Science Center Movement & Smorgasbords of Learning Props: Local “Hands-On” Knowledge Amidst Deindustrialization and Ecological Crises……………..72 Chapter 6: Concluding Reflections on “Public Understanding of Science” & Everyday Life…………….107 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………114 2 Acknowledgments I could not have completed this dissertation without the assistance of a wide array of institutions and people who contributed their time, insights, camaraderie, and funding. My thanks especially to my dissertation committee: Professor Ann Swidler, Professor Neil Fligstein, Professor John Levi Martin, and Professor Richard Candida Smith. In particular, I would like to thank Ann Swidler, my dissertation chair, for all of her thoughtful comments over the years, including her suggestion that I check out Leo Marx’s The Machine in the Garden. I thank her also for her on-going enthusiasm for my rather idiosyncratic project, and keen questions regarding the sociological stakes of my developing analysis. Thanks to Neil Fligstein for pointing me to the literature on institutions, organizations and institutional transformation, as well as trying to steer me onto more solid disciplinary ground. Thanks to John Levi Martin for sticking with me and my dissertation project even after he migrated to Chicago, and for his incisive, constructive feedback all the way to the finish line. Thanks to Richard Candida Smith for his helpful reading suggestions at multiple junctures, as well as his sensitivity to contextual detail in writing about social and intellectual life. I would also like to thank Laura Enríquez for her unwavering support and input over the years, including as the Chair of my M.A. thesis and Qualifying Exam committees. Lastly, I thank my high school journalism teacher, Susan Saunders, First Amendment scholar, for remaining a touchstone in so many ways for all these years. I would also like to thank all the people who helped me with my historical research: the staff of the Association of Science-Technology Centers, especially Wendy Pollock and Christine Ruffo; the archival and collections staff at Chicago’s Museum of Science & Industry, particularly Sean O’Connor; the archival and library staff at the Boston Museum of Science, particularly Carolyn Kirdahy; and in Media Archives at the Exploratorium, thank you especially to Megan Bury. In addition, I am very grateful to all the people who took the time to be interviewed for this project, at the above institutions as well as at the National Science Foundation, the American Association of Museums, the Marian Koshland Science Museum, and the Smithsonian museums. All of your assistance was invaluable in navigating the voluminous archives and other data sources I encountered. I would like to acknowledge the generous financial support of the following institutions: the Department of Sociology at University of California, Berkeley; the Graduate Division at U.C. Berkeley; the Bancroft Library at Berkeley; and the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program. I am very grateful for the research and writing opportunities made possible by this support. Among my friends, I would especially like to thank: Shannon Gleeson, Barbara Haya, John and Willie Kaiser, Tony Lin, Rebecca Mair, Rachel Massey, Teferi Mergo, Sinead Noone, Vivien Petras, Chris Sullivan, Robert Vibat, and the community of the Empty Gate Zen Center in Berkeley. Your collective kindness, critical distance, quirkiness, and humor over the years have helped me to maintain perspective and stay in touch with my core through this Ph.D. journey. Finally, I would like to thank my parents, Gilbert and Patricia, for all of the love and labor they have poured into me – and my brother – over the years. I dedicate this dissertation to them. To my mom, Pat: thank you for reading “Go, Dog, Go!” to me as a kid – over and over and over again, and for making sure Mr. Chipmunk’s notes reached me from Deception Pass; and to my dad, Gil: thank you for your DIY ethic of making our furniture, alongside your driftwood sculpture Zen. Thank you! 3 Chapter 1: Displaying “The Natural World” for Public Curiosity – Museum Genealogies In some sense, this dissertation started one day as I wandered through Seattle’s new Science Fiction Museum, opened in 20041, the brainchild of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, also a major investor in the SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) Institute. The Science Fiction Museum was located at the Seattle Center, an area north of downtown developed for the 1962 Century 21 Exposition – the first world’s fair in Seattle since the 1909 Alaska- Yukon-Pacific Exposition publicizing the development of the Northwest. While the 1909 fairgrounds became the campus of the University of Washington, the 1962 world’s fair catalyzed the construction of Seattle’s iconic Space Needle, the futuristic monorail that remains mostly a tourist stop, as well as the Pacific Science Center. The Pacific Science Center was the U.S.’ first so-called “science center” museum – a place that I visited numerous times growing up, encouraged to become a “woman in science and engineering.” Walking through the Science Fiction Museum, I was struck by the similarities between some of its exhibitionary themes and those at the nearby Pacific Science Center. Though at the Science Fiction Museum, the question featured repeatedly in exhibits was “What If?” – whereas at the Pacific Science Center, the pivotal question was “What Is?” As I explored the Science Fiction Museum, I also looked for an exhibit devoted to Octavia Butler, the award-winning science fiction writer2 whose voice stood out in that field not only for her writing, but also due to her race and gender, as an African American woman. Not knowing much about her, I had heard her read once at an event celebrating her book Kindred (1979) in Berkeley’s Morrison Library – itself a kind of museum of old books. I came away inspired by her spirited wit and imaginative, critical, time-traveling “What Ifs” – bending genres I had never managed to be very interested in previously. Since she had also lived in the Seattle area during the last part of her life, I thought there might be a significant exhibit devoted to her work and legacy in the museum. I found no such exhibit – though she was mentioned in passing in one room. But I continued looking into Octavia Butler’s narratives of science, technology and nature, while juxtaposing them with the high-tech “new economy” narratives of Paul Allen and Silicon Valley – which often seemed far removed from the material artifacts traditionally collected in museums, as well as from many everyday, analog landscapes – material culture writ large (Mukerji 2010). As I considered

Load more

  123

Copy Link