Download or read book Natural History Museum Alive written by Amabel Adcock and published by . This book was released on 2014-01 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title explores the incredible array of extinct creatures chosen by David Attenborough in his film 'Natural History Museum Alive 3D'. Each chapter investigates the stories and myths surrounding the discovery of these priceless specimens and reveals the surprising true stories behind their journey to the museum's display cabinets.
Download or read book Modern Natural History Museums written by Barton Warren Evermann and published by . This book was released on 1918 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Biological Collections written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2021-01-29 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Biological collections are a critical part of the nation's science and innovation infrastructure and a fundamental resource for understanding the natural world. Biological collections underpin basic science discoveries as well as deepen our understanding of many challenges such as global change, biodiversity loss, sustainable food production, ecosystem conservation, and improving human health and security. They are important resources for education, both in formal training for the science and technology workforce, and in informal learning through schools, citizen science programs, and adult learning. However, the sustainability of biological collections is under threat. Without enhanced strategic leadership and investments in their infrastructure and growth many biological collections could be lost. Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century recommends approaches for biological collections to develop long-term financial sustainability, advance digitization, recruit and support a diverse workforce, and upgrade and maintain a robust physical infrastructure in order to continue serving science and society. The aim of the report is to stimulate a national discussion regarding the goals and strategies needed to ensure that U.S. biological collections not only thrive but continue to grow throughout the 21st century and beyond.
Download or read book The American Museum of Natural History and How It Got That Way written by Colin Davey and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2019-05-14 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tells the story of the building of the American Museum of Natural History and Hayden Planetarium, a story of history, politics, science, and exploration, including the roles of American presidents, New York power brokers, museum presidents, planetarium directors, polar and African explorers, and German rocket scientists. The American Museum of Natural History is one of New York City’s most beloved institutions, and one of the largest, most celebrated museums in the world. Since 1869, generations of New Yorkers and tourists of all ages have been educated and entertained here. Located across from Central Park, the sprawling structure, spanning four city blocks, is a fascinating conglomeration of many buildings of diverse architectural styles built over a period of 150 years. The first book to tell the history of the museum from the point of view of these buildings, including the planned Gilder Center, The American Museum of Natural History and How It Got That Way contextualizes them within New York and American history and the history of science. Part II, “The Heavens in the Attic,” is the first detailed history of the Hayden Planetarium, from the museum’s earliest astronomy exhibits, to Clyde Fisher and the original planetarium, to Neil deGrasse Tyson and the Rose Center for Earth and Space, and it features a photographic tour through the original Hayden Planetarium. Author Colin Davey spent much of his childhood literally and figuratively lost in the museum’s labyrinthine hallways. The museum grew in fits and starts according to the vicissitudes of backroom deals, personal agendas, two world wars, the Great Depression, and the Cold War. Chronicling its evolution―from the selection of a desolate, rocky, hilly, swampy site, known as Manhattan Square to the present day―the book includes some of the most important and colorful characters in the city’s history, including the notoriously corrupt and powerful “Boss” Tweed, “Father of New York City” Andrew Haswell Green, and twentieth-century powerbroker and master builder Robert Moses; museum presidents Morris K. Jesup, Henry Fairfield Osborn, and Ellen Futter; and American presidents, polar and African explorers, dinosaur hunters, and German rocket scientists. Richly illustrated with period photos, The American Museum of Natural History and How It Got That Way is based on deep archival research and interviews.
Download or read book Of Whales and Dinosaurs written by Kevin Y.L. Tan and published by NUS Press. This book was released on 2015-04-18 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Singapore's collection of Southeast Asian animals–one of the world's largest–dates back to the old Raffles Museum, officially established in 1878.With the opening of the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum in 2015, the original Raffles Museum has "reincarnated" and the loop on its remarkable 127-year history has closed. Beneath the sleek exterior of today's modern museum building lies a saga of titanic struggles and changes. That the collections survived at all–through the multiple challenges of the nineteenth century, the disruption of World War Two, and its potential disintegration in the face of Singapore's modernization–is nothing short of miraculous. This book is not only an institutional history of the museum but also tells the story of frustrations, commitment and courage of the numerous individuals who battled officialdom, innovated endlessly and overcame the odds to protect Singapore's natural history heritage. The book features 108 historical photographs and natural history illustrations printed in full colour throughout.
Download or read book Possessing Nature written by Paula Findlen and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1994-09-16 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1500 few Europeans regarded nature as a subject worthy of inquiry. Yet fifty years later the first museums of natural history had appeared in Italy, dedicated to the marvels of nature. Italian patricians, their curiosity fueled by new voyages of exploration and the humanist rediscovery of nature, created vast collections as a means of knowing the world and used this knowledge to their greater glory. Drawing on extensive archives of visitors' books, letters, travel journals, memoirs, and pleas for patronage, Paula Findlen reconstructs the lost social world of Renaissance and Baroque museums. She follows the new study of natural history as it moved out of the universities and into sixteenth- and seventeenth-century scientific societies, religious orders, and princely courts. Findlen argues convincingly that natural history as a discipline blurred the border between the ancients and the moderns, between collecting in order to recover ancient wisdom and the development of new textual and experimental scholarship. Her vivid account reveals how the scientific revolution grew from the constant mediation between the old forms of knowledge and the new.
Download or read book Science Museums in Transition written by Carin Berkowitz and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2017-07-19 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The nineteenth century witnessed a dramatic shift in the display and dissemination of natural knowledge across Britain and America, from private collections of miscellaneous artifacts and objects to public exhibitions and state-sponsored museums. The science museum as we know it—an institution of expert knowledge built to inform a lay public—was still very much in formation during this dynamic period. Science Museums in Transition provides a nuanced, comparative study of the diverse places and spaces in which science was displayed at a time when science and spectacle were still deeply intertwined; when leading naturalists, curators, and popular showmen were debating both how to display their knowledge and how and whether they should profit from scientific work; and when ideals of nationalism, class politics, and democracy were permeating the museum's walls. Contributors examine a constellation of people, spaces, display practices, experiences, and politics that worked not only to define the museum, but to shape public science and scientific knowledge. Taken together, the chapters in this volume span the Atlantic, exploring private and public museums, short and long-term exhibitions, and museums built for entertainment, education, and research, and in turn raise a host of important questions, about expertise, and about who speaks for nature and for history.
Download or read book Windows on Nature written by Stephen Christopher Quinn and published by . This book was released on 2006-04 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Profiles more than forty habitat dioramas from the American Museum of Natural History, describing each one's contents and creation and presenting full-color photos and archival images.
Download or read book Wild LA written by Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and published by Timber Press. This book was released on 2019-03-19 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Los Angeles may have a reputation as a concrete jungle, but in reality, it’s incredibly biodiverse, teeming with an amazing array of animals and plants. You just need to know where to find them. Wild LA—from the experts at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County—is the guidebook you’ve been waiting for. Equal parts natural history book, field guide, and trip planner, Wild LA has something for everyone. You’ll learn about the factors shaping LA nature—including flood, fire, and climate change—and find profiles of over one hundred local species, from sea turtles to rare plants to Hollywood's famous mountain lion, P-22. Also included are day trips that detail which natural wonders you can experience on hiking trails, in public parks, and in your own backyard.
Download or read book Life on Display written by Karen A. Rader and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-10-03 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rich with archival detail and compelling characters, Life on Display uses the history of biological exhibitions to analyze museums’ shifting roles in twentieth-century American science and society. Karen A. Rader and Victoria E. M. Cain chronicle profound changes in these exhibitions—and the institutions that housed them—between 1910 and 1990, ultimately offering new perspectives on the history of museums, science, and science education. Rader and Cain explain why science and natural history museums began to welcome new audiences between the 1900s and the 1920s and chronicle the turmoil that resulted from the introduction of new kinds of biological displays. They describe how these displays of life changed dramatically once again in the 1930s and 1940s, as museums negotiated changing, often conflicting interests of scientists, educators, and visitors. The authors then reveal how museum staffs, facing intense public and scientific scrutiny, experimented with wildly different definitions of life science and life science education from the 1950s through the 1980s. The book concludes with a discussion of the influence that corporate sponsorship and blockbuster economics wielded over science and natural history museums in the century’s last decades. A vivid, entertaining study of the ways science and natural history museums shaped and were shaped by understandings of science and public education in the twentieth-century United States, Life on Display will appeal to historians, sociologists, and ethnographers of American science and culture, as well as museum practitioners and general readers.
Download or read book The Lost Species written by Christopher Kemp and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2020-11-25 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We hear routinely about dinosaurs unearthed in the Gobi Desert, about new marsupials found in the forests of Madagascar, about darling deep sea squid in the polar regions. These discoveries tend to be accompanied by wondrous feats of adventuring scientists. But just as one can experience the world in a backyard, or farther reaches of the world with a good book and a comfy armchair, scientists themselves know that the natural history museums of the world contain some of the best terrain for discovering new species. In recent years scientists have found in museum drawers and cabinets a new rove beetle collected by Darwin, a tiny lungless salamander thinner than a matchstick, a monkey from the Brazilian rainforest, and a 40 million year old beardog. The Lost Species shares the thrill of spelunking in museum basements, digging in museum trays, and breathing new life in taxidermied beings--a in a days' adventure for the scientists in this book. These discoveries help tell the story of life, and the priceless collections of natural history museums.
Download or read book Life on Display written by Karen A. Rader and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-10-03 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Life on Display traces the history of biological exhibits in American museums to demonstrate how science museums have shaped and been shaped by understandings of science and public education in twentieth-century society. Karen Rader and Victoria Cain document how public natural history and science museums’ ongoing efforts to create popular educational displays led these institutions to develop new identities, ones that changed their positions in both twentieth-century science and American culture. They describe how, pre-1945, biological exhibitions changed dramatically--from rows upon rows of specimen collections to large-scale dioramas with push-button displays--as museums attempted to negotiate the changing, and often conflicting, interests of scientists, educators, and the public. The authors then reveal how, from the 1950s through the 1980s, museum staffs experimented with wildly different definitions of life science and life science education, and how, in the process, natural history and science museums and science centers faced significant public and scientific scrutiny. The book concludes with a discussion of the ways corporate sponsorship and contemporary blockbuster economics influenced the content and display of science and natural history museums in the century’s last decades. As a dynamic historical account of how museums negotiated their multiple roles in science and society, Life on Display will attract a diverse audience of cultural historians, sociologists, and ethnographers of science, as well as museum practitioners.
Download or read book The Natural History of Selborne written by Gilbert White and published by . This book was released on 1832 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Return of Curiosity written by Nicholas Thomas and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2016-08-15 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Spy Museum, the Vacuum Cleaner Museum, the National Mustard Museum—not to mention the Art Institute, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Getty Center: museums have never been more robust, curating just about everything there is and assuming a new prominence in public life. The Return of Curiosity explores museums in the modern age, offering a fresh perspective on some of our most important cultural institutions and the vital function they serve as stewards of human and natural history. Reflecting on art galleries, science and history institutions, and collections all around the world, Nicholas Thomas argues that, in times marked by incredible insecurity and turbulence, museums help us sustain and enrich society. Moreover, they stimulate us to think in new ways about our world, compelling our curiosity and showing us the importance of understanding one another. Thomas looks at museums not simply as storehouses of old things but as the products of meaningful relationships between curators, the public, history, and culture. These relationships, he shows, don’t always go smoothly, but they do always offer new insights into the many ways we value—and try to preserve—the world we live in. The result is a refreshing and hopeful look at museums as a cultural force, one that, by gathering together paintings, tropical birds, antiques, or even our own bodies, offers an illuminating reflection of who we are.
Download or read book Nature s Museums written by Carla Yanni and published by Princeton Architectural Press. This book was released on 2005-09-09 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Yanni (art history, Rutgers U.) examines the relationship between architecture and science in the 19th century by considering the physical placement and display of natural artifacts in Victorian natural history museums. She begins by discussing the problem of classification, the social history of collecting, as well as architectural competitions an
Download or read book Teaming with Life written by and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 8 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Natural History Museums written by Paisley S. Cato and published by Texas Tech University Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All persons involved with natural history museums--from administrators to exhibit designers--will find this work useful. The chapters in the volume provide a general overview as well as address specific topics concerning the roles and functions of natural history museums. Topics in this survey include conservation, care, use, management, and preservation of collections; the role of exhibits and other educational materials, as well as ideas and guidelines for some exciting new approaches for this facet of natural history museums; and, in addition, useful information about possible sources of funding for natural history museums.
