Life on Display: Revolutionizing U.S. Museums of Science and Natural History in the Twentieth Century

by Karen A. Rader, Victoria E.M. Cain

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.

Genres: Science, Natural History, Museums, History, Nonfiction

456 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2014

Reviews

[Dianne]

For science museum fanatics like myself, this historical review is excellent. I enjoyed content from the director of the NC Museum of Natural Science.

[Mike Violano]

I really enjoyed the modern history of Natural Science Museums in Life on Display. It is a highly readable scholarly treatment (there are 110 pages of footnotes and a lengthy bibliographic essay). The launch of habitat dioramas by the American Museum of Natural History and other institutions in the early 20th century spurred public attendance. Educational displays and research vied for dollars; benefactors flocked to funding field work worldwide to create displays that wowed the masses. Authors Rader and Cain trace the changes and challenges at museums and their staffs in the years after World War II and the early 1970s. The final chapters on interactive displays, the use of video and technology and "edutainment and engagement" are a strong conclusion to a well researched work. Recommended.