Carin Berkowitz is the director of the Beckman Center for the History of Chemistry at the Chemical Heritage Foundation. She is the author of Charles Bell and the Anatomy of Reform and of a series of articles on anatomy, images, and objects published in Bu Bernard Lightman is professor of humanities at York University and president of the History of Science Society. Among his most recent publications are the edited collections Global Spencerism: The Communication and Appropriation of a Brit
"This book allows its readers to see what that paradoxical
institution-defining process looked like, both in broad outlines,
over a decades-long panorama, and close-up, in exquisitely
researched and well-written micro-narratives. Taken together, these
essays explain why museums became increasingly important and shed
further light on the tensions inherent to museums'
still-in-transition existence."
--Annals of Science
"Science Museums in Transition blurs distinctions between
exhibitions and museums with a deft appreciation of the role of
performance and spectacle. It stresses the variability of
architecture, function, display, and values across the nineteenth
century, and therefore what was regarded as a 'museum' and what
might be considered to be 'science.'"
--Sophie Forgan, Captain Cook Memorial Museum
"On both sides of the Atlantic, exhibitions, public demonstrations,
and a salmagundi of museums made science available to all kinds of
audiences. The essays in this enjoyable collection add mightily to
our understanding of nineteenth-century science, and they remind us
that a vibrant world of public engagement existed where science was
performed and put on display."
--Steven Conn, Miami University
"This is a well-conceived and illuminating collection that writes
back into museology the protean and contentious varieties of the
science museum."
--Isis
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