This is a vital new work; the first to take the University of Manchesters Museum as its subject. By setting the museum in its cultural and intellectual contexts, Nature and culture explores twentieth-century collecting and display, and the status of the object in the modern world. Beginning with the origins of the Manchester Museum, accounting for its development as an internationally renowned university museum, and concluding at its major expansion at the turn of the millennium, this book casts new light on the history of museums.
How did objects become knowledge? Who encountered museum objects on their way to museums? What happened to collections within the museum? How did visitors use and respond to objects? In answering these questions, Nature and culture illuminates not only the history of one institution, but also contributes to wider discussions in the history of science, cultural history and museology.
Sam Alberti is Lecturer in Art Gallery and Museum Studies at the Centre for Museology and Research Fellow at the Manchester Museum, University of Manchester
List of figures
Acknowledgements
List of abbreviations
Introduction: museum historiographies
I. Museums and disciplines
II. The lives of objects
Notes
1. Prologue: the Manchester Natural History Society
I. The Museum on Peter Street
II. Visitors and staff
III. Transfer and dissolution
Notes
2. Nature: scientific disciplines in the museum
I. Unified nature 18871910
II. Expanding collections 191050
III. Nature dislocated 195090
IV. Conclusion: cultural cartography and the Museum
Notes
3. Culture: artefacts and disciplinary formation
I. Culture precipitated 18901927
II. Nature and culture distinguished 192769
III. Culture consolidated 196990
IV. Conclusion: shaping disciplines
Notes
4. Acquisition: collecting networks and the museum
I. Foundation and empire
II. The economy of donation
III. Value for money?
IV. The museum and the field
V. Transfers and loans
VI. Conclusion: the politics of acquisition
Notes
5. Practice: technique and the lives of objects in the collection
I. Preparing and conserving
II. Recording and cataloguing
III. Storing and displaying
IV. Conclusion: towards a history of museum practice
6. Visitors: audiences and objects
I. Organising the visitor
II. Educating the visitor
III. Town and gown
IV. Involving the visitor
V. The visitor experience
VI. Conclusion: expanding the history of museums
Notes
Conclusion: the museum in the twentieth century
Notes
List of Archives
Bibliography
