Divine Display or Secular Science: Defining Nature at the Natural History Museum in London Author(s): Carla Yanni Source: Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 55, No. 3 (Sep., 1996), pp. 276-299 Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the Society of Architectural Historians Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/991149 Accessed: 21-08-2016 19:45 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Society of Architectural Historians, University of California Press are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians This content downloaded from 128.59.106.243 on Sun, 21 Aug 2016 19:45:58 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Divine Display or Secular Science Defining Nature at the Natural History Museum in London Owen was the premier reconstructive anatomist in Victorian CARLA YANNI, University of New Mexico England, and he was later known as an opponent of Darwinism. His first job at the British Museum, which at the time held the Conflicting ranging from definitions nature as the unwritten of nature Book of God in to the Victorian age, natural history collections, was to secure government funds for nature as secular science, affected the architectural develop- them, and to persuade Parliament to allow the division of the ment of the Natural History Museum in London. The protago- collection into two parts: antiquities and natural history. Any- nists in its story-scientists, politicians, and architects-agreed thing made by human hands would remain with the British on the cultural worth of museums, but disagreed on their form. Museum in Bloomsbury, thus making a boundary between Alfred Waterhouse, the museum's architect, entered this storm, God-made and man-made objects, to use Victorian terms. This designing a monumental building to respond to impermanent division was derived from natural theology, especially William accounts of natural history. Behind such technical concemrns as Paley's Natural Theology (1802): the purpose of a natural history site selection, lighting, and display techniques lay questions of museum was thus to show the greatness of God in the variety of the deepest concemrn to Victorians: What was nature? And how nature. The kind of objects usually displayed in many of today's could nature best be presented to an array of audiences? anthropology museums---carved masks, textiles, canoes, and This article discusses three issues in the museum's architec- the like-did not promote natural theology and would have tural history: the scope of the displays, the suitability of exhibition been out of place in Owen's proposed museum. architecture, and the appropriateness of ecclesiastical imagery In 1858, more than a hundred scientists (probably encour- in the final building. Beginning in the 1850s, Richard Owen aged by Owen) sent a letter to Benjamin Disraeli, the chancellor (1804-1892), an upper-class conservative natural theologian, of the exchequer, complaining of inadequate space for natural and Thomas H. Huxley (1825-1895), a middle-class secular history at the British Museum. Too many specimens were out of evolutionist of the younger generation, debated the breadth of sight in damp storage areas, and even the collections that were the museum's displays, Owen proposing an encyclopedic mu- on display, like omrnithology, pictured in the Illustrated London seum of the entire imperial collection, while Huxley preferred a News on Easter Monday 1845, were overcrowded [Figure 1]. small didactic museum for the public and a private research Scientists concurred that natural history should be removed center for scientists. Just after the competition, which was held from the British Museum, but the removal led to conflicts over in 1864, the engineer Francis Fowke (1824-1865), whose the possible division of the museum into popular and working design was selected, and architect Robert Kerr (1824-1905), collections, and the sites of these two parts. Owen was eager to whose entry placed second, disagreed about the extent to which improve conditions, raise money, and organize a new museum, exhibition architecture should encroach upon museum design, but first he had to contend with skeptics in the scientific revealing a tension between notions of the museum as show- community, particularly Huxley.3 Unlike many Victorian scien- place and the museum as scientific research center. Finally, we tists, Huxley lacked personal wealth, and at first found it will look at the reception in journals and newspapers of the difficult to eamrn a living, although by the end of his career he museum's architecture, especially the omrnament and the nave- held several important appointments, including that of lecturer like central hall, around the time of its opening day in 1881.1 in natural history at the Royal School of Mines, where he devoted himself to educating working people. In his lectures he THE PROGRAM AND PRELIMINARY PLANS emphasized the value of objective science and freedom of When Richard Owen became Superintendent of Natural thought His- for the daily lives of ordinary citizens. Nicknamed tory at the British Museum in 1856, he was already an "Darwin's authority Bulldog," Huxley debated evolution with Bishop on both natural history and museum design, having Wilberforcesupervised (who had been coached by Owen) in 1860 in Deane the museum at the Royal College of Surgeons in London.2 and Woodward's newly opened Oxford University Museum. 276 JSAH / 55:3, SEPTEMBER 1996 This content downloaded from 128.59.106.243 on Sun, 21 Aug 2016 19:45:58 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms A4? ,~ ~~~t V ..j .......# Ilk b- FIGURE 1: Robert Smirke, British Museum, interior, Great Zoology Gallery, Illustroted London News 6 (29 March 1845) Throughout where the naturalists second half could of conveniently the nineteenth compare century, specimens he to promoted living a secularanimals. and In accord progressive with Huxley, view of Darwin science, saw whichstuffing skins made him and arebuilding leader among skeletons the young as crowd-pleasing men who pursued techniques science and as profession proof ofrather "a sort than of gentlemanly vanity in the hobby.4 curators."7 This remark was In a petition probably of directed November to Richard 1858, Huxley Owen, whoand wantedeight like- to reconstruct minded beasts scientists, for a includingunified, large, Charles encyclopedic Darwin, urged museum that thatthe would zoological serve as an ideal model of Creation. collections in the British Museum be divided into two major parts: The scientists' discussion of the site reveals anxiety concern-a study series for scientists near the zoo and a pop- ular series ing administrative power. Scientists opposed inthe move of the South Kensington, the suburb Prince Albert had promoted entire collection to South Kensington, as considered a site afor cultural center for London since 1851, the year it hosted educational the museums and spectacular exhibitions successful like the Great Exhibition.5 As Huxley wrote to John Dalton Crystal Palace, because it signaled their loss of administrative Hooker, director of the botanical gardens at Kew: control. Huxley wanted scientists, not bureaucrats, to control The best thing, I firmly believe, would be for the Economic Zoology and the natural history collection; thus he believed only the popular a set of well selected types to go to Kensington .... [T]o have a grand collection should be moved to South Kensington, the domain scientific zoological and paleontological collection for working purposes of the government-run Department of Science and Art. As he close to the Gardens [the Zoological Gardens in Regent's Park] where wrote to Hooker: "I should be sorry to see the scientific the living beasts are, would be a grand thing.6 collection placed under any auspices as those which govern the Huxley 'Bilers,"'" as he envisionedcalled the Brompton Boilers, in a Cockney the extensive scientific collections, bones and folded accent.8 The Brompton Boilers housed theskins, South Kensington stored in the drawers and cabinets of a facility YANNI: NATURE AND SCIENCE IN LONDON 277 This content downloaded from 128.59.106.243 on Sun, 21 Aug 2016 19:45:58 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Museum of decorative and industrial arts, later the Victoria and range for the collection of the various forms of animal life as Great Albert Museum. managed by the Department of Science and Britain. ... Naturalists consequently visit England anticipating to find in Art. Hooker recommended to Huxley that they keep the her capital and in her National Museum the richest and most varied collections near the zoo not only because of the animals, but materials for their comparison and deductions. And they ought to be in a also "to keep out of the K[ensington] Gore people's clutches.1"9 state pre-eminently conducive to the advancement of a philosophical Owen did not originally favor South Kensington, but the grand zoology, and on a scale commensurate with the greatness of the size of his intended museum precluded the purchase of land in nation....'2 costly central London.10 In the next few years, Huxley would lose a major battle to Owen: a single, unified museum, where Since the British Empire's national museum was the only the public and scientists would have equal access to the entire institution in the world that could amass and present such a collection, would be planned for a South Kensington site.