SIS Bulletin Issue 7

Scientific Instrument Society Bulletin of the Scientific Instrument Society No. 7 1985 Bulletin of the Scientific Instrument Society (Price: £4 per issue including back numbers where available) Mailing Address for Editorial Matters Dr. Jon Darius c/o Science Museum London SW7 2DD United Kingdom Mailing Address for Administrative Matters Mr. Howard Dawes Neville House 42/46 Hagley Road Birmingham BI6 8PZ United Kingdom Executive Committee Gerard Turner, Chairman Alan Stimson, Vice-Chairman Howard Dawes, Executive Secretary Trevor Waterman, Meetings Secretary Bnan Brass, Treasurer Jeremy Collins Jon Darius John Dennett Alan Miller Carole Stott David Weston Editor of the Bulletin Jon Darius Editorial Assistants Peter Delehar Alan Stimson Typesetting and Printing Halpen Design & Print Limited Victoria House Gertrude Street Chelsea London SWI0 0JN (01-351 5577) The Scientific Instrument Society is a ReKisterecl Charity No. 326733. For Table of Contents, see inside back cover. Editor's Page Science Museums and boils down to'when is a museum not a building in B]ythe Road in west Sacred Cows museum', as Neff Cossons discussed London for the benefits of in an article in the Listener fifteen instrumental research and related months ago. (Neff Cossons is currently studies. One eventual by-product of Museums are fertile breeding grounds Director of the National Maritime this project, it is hoped, will be to for sacred cows, and those which Museum, Greenwich but assumes the quench the ire of those who claim, harbour scientific instruments are no directorship of the Science Museum in with justice, that it is at best exception. The way in which museums South Kensington on the retirement of disingenuous and at worst collect, conserve and display their Dame Margaret Weston next March.) It hypocritical to spend taxpayers' wares owes much more to the is safe to predict that no irrefutable money on objects which they cannot workings of tradition than to the answer will ever emerge to Nell ever expect to see. dictates of either logic or curatorial Cossons' rhetorical question. conviction. Without purporting to Another sacred bull challenged by the explore the subject in any depth, let me In the context of scientific instruments, well-known torero (if not indeed corral some of the revered cattle for nevertheless, the issue becomes much matador) Sir Roy Strong, Director of inspection. more straightforward. The the Victoria k Albert Museum since instruments themselves are the sine 1974, is what might be called There is something of an identity crisis qua non; all the rest is either compulsive acquisition on the part of in the realm of museums at present. In supererogstion or persiflage. museums and art galleries. The the Victorian/Edwardian heyday of Explanations without instruments compulsion is voiced in several ways: museums in Britain, their function was may work when the focus is social or "We have examples of sectors by Bion, readily grasped. To take the case of my historical, but an account of Canivet, Delure and Le Maire, so we own museum, I could cite the Bell almucantars in the absence of an simply must acquire this one signed Report of 22 March 1911: "By means of astrolabe must be pretty stultifying. by Chapotot." "It would be a tragedy of exhibited scientific instruments and Instruments without explanations, on this masterpiece by Duccio were lost to apparatus, machines and other objects, the other hand -- at least without the the nation, and we must raise £1.8 the Collections in the Science Museum multimedia calisthenics in which million forthwith to keep it from ought to afford illustrations and latter-day curators (myself included) emigrating to America." (As most exposition of the various branches of are often tempted to indulge -- is in readers will know, this is not an Science within its field and of their some instances not quite so absurd. imaginary example.) "If we do not applications in the Arts and Industries. "Indeed," writes Neff Cossons, "the acquire this three-draw telescope said The museum ought also to be a worthy concept of the high-volume, short-stay to have been used by Wellington, it and suitable house for the preservation day-visit will in some cases be will vanish into some private of appliances which hold honoured replaced by the semi-residential collection, surfacing not for decades place in the progress of Science or in museum in which a relatively small and perhaps neverf the history of invention..." number of users will get a very high This unquestioning compulsion to But increasingly a different trend is quality of service, engaging in research collect, collect, collect is called manifesting itself, albeit one for which or learning skills." "museum imperialism" by Roy Strong some have claimed an equally in another Listener article last July. He Those of you who have read this far venerable tradition -- that of the questions the premises on which it is may have been nonplussed to find that museum as a fun-fair, a peep-show, a implicitly founded: the "unasaailed the target is not what you surmised. theatre of entertainment along with dogma [of] the constant flow of works The old sacred cow may have been the (sometimes, claim critics, even at the of art from the private sector to the museum in its role of historical expense of) instruction. To what extent public sector', a practice nurtured by guardian, complacent in its fusty these approaches are supposed to be powerful tax incentives; the "doctrine scholarship and unresponsive to complementary or else symptomatic of of comprehensiveness', applied most public needs. But the new sacred calf is institutional schizophrenia is as relentlessly by national collections the museum that feels obliged to trot controversial an issue as any in the without regard to the presence of the out only so much of its material as will museum world. candidate for acquisition in some local illustrate an easily digestible story and collection; and of course the hierarchy The argument usually runs along one consigns the rest to inaccessible of funding priorities according to of several well-rutted tracks. Either storage vaults. Surely there is no point which acquisition of objects easily museums ought not to be so narrow- in waiting for the judgement of Paris outstrips in importance the ability of minded as to define themselves by -- the only defensible course is to do the museum property to conserve and rows of objects on parade in glass cases both, to provide thematic galleries to display them. and should be open to fresh winds, where the emphasis is laid upon the from the hands-on free-for-all to video evolution, purpose and products of With more mischief than malice, Roy games and any tomfoolery the curator any given species of instrumentation, Strong also questions "the virtually as jester can devise. Or these tactics are and in addition to set out the near uncontrolled spawning of new acceptable insofar as they fulfil the duplicates, the lesser examples, the museums". Wanton proliferation of canons of education but must be variants, the false starts and dead ends, museums must be curtailed, without a eschewed if they titillate but do not if such they be, in a quite different type doubt, but then market forces can instruct. Or else there is nothing in the of gallery, well documented but devoid usually be counted upon to apply the slightest reprehensible in this of unifying verbiage. If one may be Malthusian doctrine. But it is approach so long as we recognize that excused for blowing the trumpet museums of local history which form it does not coincide with that of a closest to hand, it is precisely to satisfy the majority, and ! doubt whether any museum -- the same argument is used the latter need that the Science of the national museums including by oenophiles who have nothing Museum (in conjunction with the that which Sir Roy directs would want against parsnip wine so long as it is not Victoria & Albert Museum and the to take up the gauntlet of running misconstrued as wine. The question British Museum) is converting a them. Let them spawn if their councils L can atford them! desirable for joining a roomful of it is a cow so sacred as to be dangerous In an era when funds in many sectors Rodin or other bronzes, predecessors for well-meaning curators to touch of public spending threaten drought, it or successors. It can stand perfectly is the question of funding priorities. Is is essential to question collection well on its own. A galvanometer, quite acquisition such a desirable end in policy at national and at local level. But the contrary, signifies precious little itself that it must be pursued even if it must be borne in mind that the very out of context. It cries out for display the object stands no chance of display diversity of character amongst among its fellow mirror and tangent in an already overcrowded gallery, museums and collections will preclude galvanometers and other electrical even if the museum itself is falling into a blanket solution. [n the context of apparatus of the period. serious disrepair, even if resources for scientific instruments, the charge of Setting aside that small percentage of conservation are utterly overstretched "museum imperialism" takes on quite instruments, usually but not or, worse still, non-existent? There a different cast. For one thing, a Duccio necessarily early, which may indeed may be no simple answer to all these is worth an awful lot of Chapotot be one of a kind, we are dealing with questions, but failure to put them sectors; it is even worth, strictly in objects manufactured in some would be tantamont to dereliction of market terms, rather a lot of Cole numbers to satisfy a perceived market duty by museum administrators.

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