Science Museum Group Journal Issue 12

The Science Museum Group is almost unique in that it is itself an object of research, it produces its own research (by itself and in collaboration), and it is a resource for others conducting research. Issue 12 reflects this variety. Collaborative projects feature in a number of articles. Taking a ‘micro-fellowship’ at the National Railway Museum as a case study, Anna Geurts and Oliver Betts discuss how museum/academic partnerships can work better. A mini-collection of papers on ‘Technologies of Romance’ showcases a collaboration between the Science Museum and Central St Martins University of the Arts where different disciplinary approaches to the interaction between technology and human society collide. Meanwhile, Anna Woodham and Elizabeth Haines describe yet another collaboration: a joint Science Museum Group/King’s College London study on the role of enthusiast expert groups as ambassadors for stored collections. Other papers in this issue reflect museum practice internationally: Tacye Phillipson’s article describes a statistical analysis of collecting at National Museums Scotland, while Tom Everett discusses the challenges of replicating Alexander Graham Bell and Clarence J Blake’s ear phonautograph for Sound by Design, a new permanent gallery at the Canada Science and Technology Museum. From outside the museum world, Sara Dominici presents fascinating research on the parallel development of the bicycle and the camera and its impact on the modern mobile gaze. In a paper showing the richness of archival research, Hannah Bower analyses a series of editions of an eighteenth-century pamphlet on treating scrofula, showing how they illuminate the fluid relationships between readers and authors, patients and experts. The Issue is completed by a review of a new book on James Watt, and an exhibition review of a ‘de-colonised’ gallery at the Royal Museum of Central Africa in Belgium.

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The museum micro-fellowship
(2019-10-31)
Geurts, Anna
;
Betts, Oliver
Sharing research ideas and connections between universities and museums is a complicated subject. Time pressures, limited resources and the differing needs and objectives of partners can make these working relationships hard to get off the ground, despite the clear benefits. Here Dr Oli Betts, the Railway Museum’s Research Lead, and Dr Anna Geurts, former Research Associate National Railway Museum at the University of Sheffield, offer a potential solution. Partnerships, they argue, can open up new avenues of collaboration, especially when kept open-minded, mutual and, importantly, fully supported by the host institutions.
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Book review: The Life and Legend of James Watt by David Phillip Miller
(2019-10-31)
Russell, Ben
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Mobilising the Energy in Store: stored collections, enthusiast experts and the ecology of heritage
(2019-10-31)
Haines, Elizabeth
;
Woodham, Anna
In this multi-media article we examine the experiences and perspectives of a group of enthusiast experts as they encounter the collections held in store across the Science Museum Group as part of the Energy in Store project. Their voices are reflected here from observations during the project, from initial participant interviews and from filmed interviews conducted towards the end of the project. Enthusiast experts in this context often include former professional engineers, model builders or even inventors, who have detailed knowledge and practical skills that are vital to shedding new light on the collections. This group are stalwarts in volunteer museums and heritage networks across the UK and internationally. However, previous research has indicated that in recent years this audience has not necessarily been seen a priority for museums. This article views the role of enthusiast experts as object ambassadors that, through their specific research practices, knowledge and understanding, help reinvigorate stored collections and can be seen as essential actors in the ecology of public heritage. We consider what form their object research takes, using a relational framework to consider enthusiast experts’ epistemic practices. From this perspective, the article argues, it becomes clear that the group are an under-utilised resource, who have important contributions to make to the dynamism and sustainability of stored museum collections.
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Technologies of Romance: introduction
(2019-10-31)
Humphreys, Laura
;
Barrett, Katy
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Collections development in hindsight: a numerical analysis of the Science and Technology collections of National Museums Scotland since 1855
(2019-10-31)
Phillipson, Tacye
Long term and bulk patterns in both the accessioning and deaccessioning of the Science and Technology collections of National Museums Scotland were revealed within their digital database records. This makes use of bulk analysis of records to show historic patterns which can inform current activities. The current and recent selection of collections for display is analysed to reveal patterns in when these objects came into the collection. The research confirms the value of both past collecting and disposal in the development of strong collections of present and future utility. It shows that both recent displays and a major mid-twentieth century re-assessment of the collection were most likely to value material which had been recently collected. It also reveals a potential tendency for less significant material to be acquired by gift than by purchase.
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‘Everything passes, except the past’: reviewing the renovated Royal Museum of Central Africa (RMCA)
(2019-10-31)
Miller, Donata
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Technologies of Romance: Valentine from a Telegraph Clerk (m) to a Telegraph Clerk (f): the material culture and standards of early electrical telegraphy
(2019-10-31)
Bruton, Elizabeth
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Writing sound with a human ear: reconstructing Bell and Blake’s 1874 ear phonautograph
(2019-10-31)
Everrett, Tom
Museums collect, preserve and interpret physical objects because they contain historical evidence that is sometimes difficult – if not impossible – to access through text and image-based research alone. In cases where original objects have been lost to history, reconstructions offer one way of reclaiming aspects of a past object’s design, use context and material culture. This article describes one such reconstruction project, which I recently undertook with collaborators at the Canada Science and Technology Museum in Ottawa. The goal of the project was to reconstruct Alexander Graham Bell and Clarence J Blake’s ear phonautograph: an 1874 curiosity that used an excised human middle ear to visually inscribe sound waves. Originally conceived of as a tool for deaf education, it became better known as the instrument that provided Bell with the technical insights he needed to develop and patent the telephone in 1876. This article consists of three parts. The first provides a historical background of the ear phonautograph and rationale for its reconstruction; the second offers a detailed description of the research and fabrication process; the third presents preliminary research findings that emerged through our experience building and operating the completed reconstruction.
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Technologies of Romance: looking for ‘object love’ in three works of video art
(2019-10-31)
O'Kane, Paul
In this paper the author discusses three works of video art featured in the Technologies of Romance symposium held at the Science Museum, London, in 2018. The author searches within video art, as a genre or medium, within its technical apparatuses and within the three particular works, for contributions to the particular notion of ‘object love’ as drawn from a paper by Hilary Geoghegan and Alison Hess (2014). The author interprets the three video artists’ works with the aim of gleaning comparative examples that might illustrate or extend the ‘object love’ concept. Mathilde Roman’s book (2016) on the ‘staging’ of video art is an influence on the text, as are two short but profound statements by Walter Benjamin, one from his Theses on a Philosophy of History (1940), another from his essay on Surrealism (1929). History, ‘the past’, museology and ‘object love’ are all woven into the core of the article. As it moves towards its conclusion the author is inspired by the image of an empty, machine-made stocking (a classic symbol of Freudian fetishism) in Elizabeth Price’s video K, in such a way that the article ends by skewing both the idea of ‘object’, and that of ‘love’ in the direction of the fetish, while concluding that the past – just as much as any particular object from or of the past – tends to be subject to fetishisation. Meanwhile, video’s relative immateriality as an art medium, and its current use by artists, is seen as representative of an age of image-based archival practices that, assisted by digital technology, might now divert traditional, object-based processes of the museum – a shift that might be summed up in the phrase ‘screen becomes vitrine’. This shift, from vitrined objects to screened images might then, in turn, have implications for the ‘object love’ that initially interested Geoghegan and Hess and which began the author’s article and this dialogue with the Science Museum.
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An overlooked eighteenth-century scrofula pamphlet: changing forms and changing readers, 1760–1824
(2019-10-31)
Bower, Hannah
This article tells the story of an eighteenth-century medical pamphlet called An essay on the nature and cure of the King’s Evil, deduced from observation and practice. This was written by John Morley (d. 1776/7), a wealthy Essex landowner who advertised free medical treatments. The pamphlet is one of many short tracts on scrofula produced after the ceremony of ‘the royal touch’ ceased with the death of Queen Anne. However, it merits special attention from historians of medicine and historians of the book because it was edited and reprinted many more times than other surviving scrofula tracts: 42 editions appeared between 1760 and 1824. This suggests significant popularity. The Essay is also of interest because the first fifteen editions display changes and additions completed by Morley before his death in late 1776 or early 1777. Between these versions, Morley consistently refashioned his identity as practitioner and author. He also adjusted his portrayal of the intended readers of the pamphlet: in later editions, readers are recorded using the Essay in increasingly complex and autonomous ways to design their own medical treatments. The pamphlet is therefore testimony to the fluid relationship between practitioner and patient. It shows that seemingly simple, formulaic and easy-to-read forms like pamphlets and case studies could play a variety of complex and shifting roles in eighteenth-century medical encounters and the construction of healing knowledge.

Science Museum Group Journal Issue 12

Science Museum Group Journal Issue 12

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