Picturing science: sharing knowledge, selling ideas

William Huggins’ depiction of the solar surface (National Maritime Museum)

This image looks like a curving, curling, abstract mosaic. It is, in fact, an attempt to capture what one observer saw when he looked through a filtered telescope lens at the Sun’s surface. Before photography developed, if astronomers wanted to share their visual experience they could only do it by drawing, adding an ability with pencil to the many necessary accomplishments of the observer. Photographing detail on the bright Sun was to prove a particular challenge.

When you know what it is you should be looking for, it is much easier to see. Familiar as we are today with spectacular images of the Sun in all kinds of different wavelengths, we have come to expect pattern, difference, structure, feathery and filament-like shapes and vast bursts of gases. This was unknown before telescopes could supply sufficient magnification and resolution.

Careful drawings were backed by verbal descriptions, but it was only by looking for themselves that other astronomers might come to accept your interpretation. Was the surface pattern “feathered”, “granulated”, “rice-grain”, “slashed straws” or “willow-leaf”? These were all terms used by observers like William Huggins, Samuel Pierpont Langley and James Nasmyth, who revealed that the Sun was not the anticipated smooth, bright disc, punctured only by a few sunspots.

These images tell two stories. One is about the astronomers who looked at, tried to capture and explain the nature of the solar surface. The other is about sharing those images, knowledge and possible explanations with a wider public. These solar close-ups were published in scientific papers, but I have taken them from a set of 38 lantern slides, produced toillustrate lectures on the Sun by a company called York & Son in around 1880.

Drawing of sunspots by James Nasmyth (National Maritime Museum)

The set includes images that show observational instruments, experimental or demonstration equipment and diagrams to explain possible theories of solar activity. The slides allowed the lecturer to, for example, introduce the audience to competing explanations of the appearance of sunspots. William Herschel had suggested that they were openings in the Sun’s luminous atmosphere, revealing a cooler surface beneath; Alexander Wilson considered them depressions in the solar surface.

Experiment using a prism to split sunlight (National Maritime Museum)

I don’t know how many of this set of slides were produced, nor whether any of them were used to enliven one or more actual lectures on the Sun (apart from my own). If they did, the part on sunspots and the solar surface might have run similarly to this 1872 article in the Popular Science Monthly, by the editor Edward Livingston Youmans. While sunspots had, of course, been long known, their complex structure was newly revealed:

But, when a telescope of high magnifying power is directed to the sun, its aspect is greatly changed: the spots lose their simplicity, and the photosphere its uniformity, and in both there are a revelation of structure, a diversity of parts, and a variety of changes, which at once provoke questions in the mind of the observer, as to the causes of this diversified appearance, and the constitution of the body which presents them. The hypotheses put forth are ingenious; but, while the facts of observation are rapidly increasing, and there is a growing agreement on many points, there is still profound uncertainty as to the interpretation to be given to the leading phenomena.

An article or a lecture on the Sun, presented in the last quarter of the 19th century would have introduced its audience to a whole new vocabulary of penumbra, faculae and photosphere. It would also have focused on the use of novel techniques in astronomy, above all the photography and spectroscopy that opened the way to a whole new branch of science. It also introduced the idea that surface irregularities on the Sun might be linked to magnetic activity and terrestrial climate.

It was an exciting topic for a lecture around 1880 – something that a commercial producer of visual aids probably rightly took up as an opportunity.

Three centuries of innovation and education at the Museum of Childhood

I recently visited the Museum of Childhood and took a few snaps of things that stood out (with apologies for the poor, beyond-glass images: it turns out that none of these items have been photographed for the V&A collections site yet). There were, of course, plenty of science-related toys on display. Chemistry sets, optical toys and a whole case devoted to lantern slides are just the tip of the iceberg. Children are surrounded by the new and by nostalgia, by pastimes that are meant to inform and which reflect the world around them

As a response to the novelty of hot air balloons, so well described in Richard Holmes’s The Age of Wonder, I enjoyed this sampler. Samplers are designed to keep children still (probably usually girls, although we have an early 20th-century sampler in the family worked by a boy called Percy), are rigorously formal in their reproduction of letters and numbers and yet there was, presumably, some freedom in choice of decoration.

This sampler was sewn by Mary Hall in 1786, just three years after the first flight of the Mongolfier brothers. However, as the catalogue description notes, there is an interesting juxtaposition between the excitement of manned flight and the verse, ‘Fragrant the rose is’, above: “in a melancholy poetic tradition that dwelt on the brevity of mortal life and was particularly popular in Britain in the 16th and 17th centuries”.

Although they weren’t on display, the Museum an incomplete astronomy-themed sampler, which is pictured and discussed in this post: Star-gazing girls of Georgian England.

I was also pleased to come across this copy of Lessons on Objects (1840) by Elizabeth Mayo, who ran Cheam School in Surrey with her brother, together with a c.1850 box of specimens designed for educational use. Both were following the pedagogical methods of Yohann Pestalozzi, a Swiss reformer and idealist who advocated child-centred, hands-on, experimental and practical learning. The book encouraged children to use all their senses to explore the world around them, before being led to more systematic understanding. Mayo’s approach influenced the School Board for London, founded in 1870. The pre-prepared specimens includes all kind of materials: wax, gum, spices, fibres, paper, fur, metals (including mercury) and more.

My final object is a bit different. It is a board game from the 1970s that never quite took off, and gloried in the name Vagabondo. In case you want to know, the catalogue description gives the full rules of the game. It was a strategy game, “easy to learn and exciting to play” that could be adapted for 2, 4, or 3, 5 and 6 players. It seems to have been motivated by some high ideals, though what I am not entirely sure. Although it was not a commercial success it won the Queen’s Award for Achievement in 1978. Most fascinatingly of all, the box front includes not only a picture of the proud inventors but also a series of endorsements from a slightly bewildering range of famous individuals, who had clearly been informed of the ideas behind it. My pic wasn’t very legible, so here’s one I found online:

The celebrity endorsements were from Dame Margot Fonteyn De Arias (who “commends your reasons for inventing it”), Roald Dahl (“a splendid game”), Sir John Betjeman, Alan Whicker, Prof Desmond Morris (“certainly better than most other recently invented board games I have come across. I rate it as highly as the very successful Master Mind”), John Pertwee (“a very good game”), Hammond Innes (“a good one”), Poul Hartling (ex-Danish Prime Minister – “most interesting and enjoyable”), and Alfred Hitchcock (“I promise to spread the word, surreptitiously of course, among my friends here in California”).

What an odd collection of people! And what a wonderful collection of objects to explore in east London.

Heritage and the Royal Institution

Cross-posted from The H Word blog [first published 29 January 2013].

The Royal Institution in about 1838, by T H Shepherd. Source: Wikimedia Commons

It has been interesting to observe reactions to the recent news about the financial troubles at the Royal Institution potentially being so severe that they might have to sell their Georgian premises on Albemarle Street. There have been calls and petitions to save the building based on an appeal to history and nostalgia. Equally, there have been questions (e.g.here, here, and here) about the RI’s modern role and whether this is well-served by a vast Mayfair building and the traditions that it celebrates.

Without treading too far into the question of what the RI does or should do as an institution for the communication of science in the 21st century, it is worth thinking about it as a site of scientific heritage and ask what makes it unique and worth preserving even if the Royal Institution itself should cease to exist.

Scientific heritage can be a difficult thing to assess, preserve and interpret. Removed from their context, old scientific instruments are apt to lose much of their meaning. Those which survive in museums are often not those which were ever used, for outdated equipment tends to be replaced and thrown away. The large technology and infrastructure of modern science poses enormous challenges for collection and preservation. Buildings in which scientific work has been done are often unexciting architecturally and opaque to the uninitiated.

Unesco, responsible for the inscription of World Heritage, has recently begun to notice that scientific heritage is under-represented on its lists. The problems of aesthetics and size are pertinent, along with the fact that science is often not understood as a manifestation of human culture in the same way that palaces, art works or technological sites like bridges and railways are.

When Unesco weighs up the importance of world heritage, it does so with the aid of three categories: immovable, moveable and intangible heritage. The first includes buildings, monuments, sites and landscapes. Plainly some of these are movable, or at least alterable, but they are associated with a particular place and very often the linking of a set of buildings or their placing within a landscape lends them greater significance than they might have on their own.

Moveable heritage, broadly speaking, consists of things that could end up in museums, such as paintings, objets d’art, textiles, scientific instruments, furniture, books and manuscripts. While individual items of immovable heritage may be hugely important or valuable, their inclusion within a larger collection, or their placing within a particular location can greatly enhance their significance and meaning.

Finally, intangible heritage is the stuff that is harder to pin down. Unesco defines it as including “living expressions and the traditions that countless groups and communities worldwide have inherited from their ancestors and transmit to their descendants, in most cases orally”. Things inscribed as intangible heritage include dances, festivals, recipes and a bewildering variety of traditions.

Intangible ideas and traditions can also play an important role in assessing the significance of items in the other two categories. Given the fact that the history of science is associated with many intangibles (i.e. things that we no longer touch or hold) – such as people, ideas, skills, discussions and so on – it is clear that this third category can be an extremely useful concept to bear in mind.

Arguably, when all three of these types of heritage come together, we have something particularly valuable. I am lucky enough to work within a World Heritage Site which includes a site of outstanding scientific significance. The Royal Observatory includes buildings designed for science, which are enhanced by their housing historic instruments used on that site, and other wonderful objects. On top of this there are the intangibles associated with the work of the Astronomers Royal and with the concepts of the Prime Meridian and Greenwich Mean Time.

The RI has a similar combination. It has a building long used for scientific and related purposes, parts of which were designed specifically for their role – most obviously the lecture theatre. It also has significant book, object and archive collections, made more significant by their close association with the place in which they are displayed or stored.

The building and objects are associated with the intangibles surrounding the people and scientific research undertaken at the institution. While Faraday’s electrical work and the discovery of 10 elements are usually highlighted, there was a wide range of work done in analysis and testing materials and techniques, often for private or government clients.

In addition to this, of course, the RI had a key role to play in the story of the relationship between science and the public. It is hard to think of another historic site that has combined these roles over such a long period of time and, especially, one that is still inhabited by the same institution. The RI’s intangible heritage is undoubtedly heightened by this fact.

It is true that the RI’s primary audience was a privileged one, catering for a very different market to, say, popular attractions with scientific content or working men’s institutions. It is not, perhaps, a tradition we would be keen to perpetuate (and the RI certainly does not do so exclusively), but we can recognise that getting society leaders on board with the messages of Davy, Faraday and their successors was hugely significant for British science in the period of its nascent professionalisation.

While science communication and outreach can and should take place beyond such hallowed halls, there is benefit in having at least some of it flavoured and informed by science’s heritage. It reminds us that science is not disembodied, pure knowledge, but that it is created by people in particular times and places, with particular equipment and in response to the demands and possibilities of the society in which they inhabit. The heritage of the RI also shows that science has to be communicated – and that this is a business with a long and often rather repetitive back story from which audiences and communicators alike can learn.

The combination of types of unique scientific heritage at the Royal Institution should be cherished. I also suspect its continuity on one site both enhances its significance and may be the best chance of its preservation.

Drawing Mars in Greenwich: recreating an experiment for Stargazing Live

Cross-posted from The H Word blog.

Filming for Stargazing Live at Queen’s House in Greenwich. Photograph: Marek Kukula

This week [NB This post was first published on 7 January 2013] sees the return of the BBC’s highly successful Stargazing Live. It starts on Tuesday, in an episode that follows last year’s biggest astronomy story by focusing on Mars.

In thinking about the search for possible life on Mars, the programme will include some of the historical observations and debates that I discussed in a previous post. I’m delighted that the programme gave us at theRoyal Observatory a chance to recreate a key Greenwich contribution to the story.

This was the 1903 experiment carried out by E. Walter Maunder, an assistant at the Observatory, exploring perception at the limits of vision. It was one element in his campaign against the then-dominant view that the Martian surface was covered with immensely long, wide and straight “canals”, thought by many to the work of an advanced civilisation.

Maunder was not alone, being joined by Eugène Michel Antoniadi andWilliam Campbell, together described in Michael J. Crowe’s The Extraterrestrial Life Debate as “the leaders of a wrecking crew” that demolished the Martian canals.

Maunder, with the assistance of the headmaster of the Royal Hospital School in Greenwich, asked a number of the school’s pupils to draw from different depictions of Mars, placed on a board at the front of the room.His results suggested that, particularly at certain distances, the eye tended to resolve indistinct waves and dots into straight lines, suggesting that the “canals” were an optical illusion rather than real surface features.

Ever since I heard about this experiment, I have wanted to recreate it. Asking people to undertake an exercise like this is a wonderful way to understand the problems and contingencies surrounding astronomical observation and recording (imagine not only peering at this small image, but it flickering in an unsteady atmosphere, and having to keep taking your eyes away in order to represent it on paper). I also wondered if it really worked as Maunder described.

Maunder claimed in his paper that the boys, aged around 12 to 14, were all “wholly and entirely ignorant of the appearance of Mars in the telescope, and of the discussions which have taken place as to the markings on his surface.” I have always wondered if this was true, given the widespread popularity of the Martian canal idea at this period.

Our guinea pigs were probably familiar with what Mars looks like when photographed today, but less likely than the 1903 schoolboys to think of drawings or canals. An interesting difference was their age and the fact that most of them were art students. This probably produced different results than had we picked people off the street but might compare interestingly with the naval cadets. The latter were encouraged by Maunder, and probably by their education, simply to draw what they could see. Our art students may have been more likely, despite my instructions, to attempt to interpret the image and to consider different graphic approaches to its re-depiction.

It is likely that the experiment took place in the school’s old gymnasium. This no longer exists, so the BBC team opted for another of the school’s former buildings – the beautiful Queen’s House. They set up the experiment pretty faithfully, with distances and scales as specified in Maunder’s paper. Told to draw, our students obliged, and demonstrated that their eyesight and drawing ability was a good deal keener than mine.

Did our results back Maunder’s? Sort of. I didn’t see the generation of any “canals” where little or nothing appeared on the original image, but there were certainly more straight lines. In our small sample, it also appeared that the middle rows were more likely to see these lines than those nearest (who saw more detail) or those furthest away (who saw little distinctly). It could be argued that these distances mimicked the experience of observing with particular-sized telescopes, creating the conditions where the eye tends to resolve indistinct detail into non-existent straight lines.

Maunder’s report of this experiment apparently brought a key ally to the campaign against Martian canals – the veteran Canadian-American astronomer Simon Newcomb. It was, however, just one of the arguments brought – one of the simplest being the point that if straight canals like those reported by Percival Lowell did exist on the curved surface of Mars, they ought to appear curved to the observer on Earth.

In his writings, Maunder focused on scientific evidence and his own experiences as an astronomical observer. He chose to stay clear of the philosophical and religious dimension of the debate, despite the fact that his popular writings in astronomy were usually framed with natural theology and Biblical references.

Religious beliefs could support either position in the debate about the existence of life on other planets. However, it was clear that Maunder, an active member of a small pentecostal, adventist sect, believed man’s relationship with God and place in the universe were unique. He could not countenance intelligent, canal-building Martians – and thus his scientific arguments were motivated by religious belief.

Watch on Tuesday to see how the experiment went and how it fits into the long history of observing Mars and the search for extra-terrestrial life. Also visit Alien Revolution a small, free exhibition at the Royal Observatory, opening in March.

In the end the section of the film that included the experiment wasn’t run live on Stargazing, due to lack of time. Happily, the whole thing was made available online and you can see it here.

Geek mythology and Nikola Tesla

Cross-posted from The H Word.

A publicity shot of Nikola Tesla in his laboratory in Colorado Springs in December 1899 – suggesting he was happy to play along with personal myth-making. Photograph: Wikimedia Commons

You may have spotted that there is a campaign afoot to buy what was built (though used only briefly) as Nikola Tesla‘s laboratory and turn it into a museum and science centre. Despite claims of neglect, Tesla evidently commands significant interest, with $500,000 of online donations pouring in within 48 hours.

The campaign is a marriage of the Tesla Science Centre - a group who were interested simply in finding space for the Science Centre located in the Shoreham-Wading River High School to expand – and Indiegogo – the campaign Let’s Build a Goddam Tesla Museum run by Matthew Inman of The Oatmeal.

The Indiegogo website opens:

Nikola Tesla was the father of the electric age. Despite having drop-kicked humanity into a second industrial revolution, up until recently he’s been an unsung hero in history books.

Calling someone “the father of….”, or claiming a “first” usually sets warning bells ringing. This post by historian of science and technology James Sumner explains why. It’s also worth pointing out that this “unsung” hero already has an artefact- and manuscript-filled museumdevoted to him in Belgrade, a society, and an airport, as well as plenty of interest from historians.

Inman had already produced a comic piece testifying to Tesla being “the greatest geek who ever lived”, as “inventor” of alternating current, and a host of other things. Tesla here is the hero not just for his undoubted vision and talents, but for being “a tinkerer” and “a geek”. He is contrasted with Thomas Edison, the villain of the piece, who “was not a geek; he was a CEO”.

Quite rightly, even though it was comedic hyperbole, Inman’s version of Tesla was countered by Alex Knapp at Forbes with the sensibly-named post, Nikola Tesla Wasn’t God And Thomas Edison Wasn’t The Devil. Overall, the point is that technological innovations require a large number of people and an enormous amount of work to be developed and brought into practical use. Apart from meaning that many more than one individual are responsible, it is also the case that if any of these individuals had not existed, the innovation would most likely have happened anyway.

The Oatmeal – in nice style - produced a response. These pieces are old news, and I don’t intend to go through the rights and wrongs of each claim. What strikes me now, in this context, is Inman’s characterisations of the two. Tesla is thrilled with pure invention, and typical of “geeks” who “forget food, sleep, friends, love everything”, and “abandon the world around them”. Edison is a “douchebag”, in part for his statement “Anything that won’t sell, I don’t want to invent. Its sale is proof of utility, and utility is success.”

The words sell and success leap out, quickly leading the reader to assume Edison was just in it for the money (as he, like many others, may have been), but let’s look at that quote a little more closely. Actually, he says that utility is what he’s after – useful things, that people will actually use. Is that so bad? Thinking of the ends as well as the means can be a moral position as well as a business decision.

While I, as someone who deals professionally with scientific heritage, am very much sympathetic to the aim of preserving an early 20th century building designed for scientific work, I harbour a tiny misgiving about what this background to the campaign might do for its future (if all goes to plan) as a science centre.

Science centres, as opposed to history of science museums, tend to present knowledge in a somewhat disembodied way, as packages of information separated from the contexts – the period, the place, the people, the “working worlds” – in which they were produced and used. However, a science centre located in an historic building that brings direct reminders of such real-world things should be a perfect place to explore how science actually happens in the world: looking at science as a process that concerns us all, not just science geeks.

It would be extremely churlish of me not to wish success to a non-profit campaign for an educational facility. Likewise, given the success of the campaign, who am I to argue with the power of fairy-stories? Yet with this connection to a celebration of Tesla as a heroic genius, lauded for choosing to withdraw from the world (despite his large number of patents and involvement with businesses and the military), I fear that the real advantage of the unique location may be lost.

Cutting a dash: men of science as ‘historical hotties’

I had a bit of fun this week tweeting links to portraits of some 19th-century men of science, suggesting that they were ’19thC scientific hotties’. Such a phrase is not, I should add, my usual vocabulary, and nor is a focus on people’s looks. And thus explanation is in order. My tweets brought a response from Vanessa Heggie - “trying to tell myself this ‘historical hotties’ thing is OK, as is clearly subversion of patriarchal power” – and linking to Bangable Dudes in History.  Was I making a feminist point? Or was I objectifying these men in a way that I would naturally find uncomfortable if it were living women? Was I, perhaps, attempting to claim that men of science can be attractive, in some sort of historical, masculine version of the (for me) dubious Cheerleaders for Science.

I was, in fact, playing with a few ideas that I didn’t want to develop in 140-character chunks on Twitter. One was exploring this as a hook for introducing less-well-known scientific figures to an unsuspecting public, another was thinking about how such men chose to be portrayed in their lifetimes, and the third was my own response to these portraits, and how they may have coloured views of these historical characters.

The whole thing started in response to this post by Beth Dunn on Thomas Say and the utopian project that had Robert Owen sending a ‘Boatload of Knowledge‘ – in the form of men of science, writers and artists – to New Harmony in the mid-West. It was not Beth’s contention, but someone had suggested that Say was a “19th century hottie”. I retweeted the post, but also suggested that I had another favourite portrait of a man of science and adventurer, the NMM’s portrait of James Clark Ross by John R. Wildman.

Ross, who travelled to both the Arctic and Antarctic, located the north magnetic pole and carried out a huge range of scientific observations, was reckoned by Jane Franklin ”the handsomest man in the navy”. He was the “scientific serviceman” par excellance: a heroic naval figure who could cut a dash and demonstrate his manly devotion to nation in time of peace. He’s fascinating, but I don’t fancy him (he’s dead, for a start), I just love the portrait: a Romantic shock of dark hair, passionate glance, icebergs, polar bearskin, Pole Star and, beautifully delineated in the foreground, an instrument known as a dip circle, used to measure variation in magnetic inclination.

As my tweet got a reasonable response, I followed it up over the next couple of days with links to Thomas Phillips’ portrait of Michael Faraday and Thomas Lawrence’s portrait of Henry Brougham. Again, these are Romanticised images of men who, in very different ways, took on public roles that were undoubtedly enhanced by their intelligence and charismatic personalities. Faraday was, of course, a star public lecturer (the Brian Cox of his day, dare I say?) as well as a hugely important figure in the history of chemistry and physics. Although modest and discrete, he certainly knew – or learned – how to capture his audiences through look, voice and gesture as well as knowledge and dexterity. Brougham, in reality, was probably no looker but I was captured by his portrait when it was displayed in a NPG exhibition, The British Portrait 1660-1960, way back in 1991 (when I just about knew of the Great Reform Act, but had never heard of history of science). It is Lawrence at his best: capturing a light of fierce intelligence in the eye of this young, ambitious, passionate lawyer.

I think I would have to admit, if challenged, that my knowledge of these portraits probably pre-disposed me to some level of sympathy for the sitters. Quite probably it was more than I might have felt had I first seen their much later photographic portraits. It’s never nice to admit, but looks and first impressions inevitably colour our impressions of people and, I think, the same can be true of those we meet through paintings and archives, although better acquaintance can often override early opinions. Other times, an interest, familiarity or admiration can build up from knowledge of the archive, only to be challenged when finally seeing a portrait that misses by a country mile the mental image built up.

What interests me particularly about these portraits, and others of the period like Humphry Davy or William Whewell, is that they depict relatively young men, in a period when youth, imagination, intellect and genius were unabashedly romanticised and celebrated. Although there are plenty of exceptions to the rule, before this date portraits often appear more formal, and later the dominance of photography brings a distinctly unflattering stiffness or realism to our heroes. By and large, too, men of science tended not to have portraits done until they had reached rich or honoured old age, usually long after their best work was behind them. And how much do they affect our assumptions? Flamsteed, the first Astronomer Royal is usually thought of as dull, plodding, uptight and downright grumpy. There is certainly plenty of this in what his wrote in old age, and it is underlined by our best-known image of him, a frontispiece to a posthumous volume, but do we think a little more kindly of him when presented with his more youthful image?

These themes are particularly pertinent in a museum setting. People and the personal are very often dominant in our displays, either reflecting the kind of material that has been collected (relics, provenances) or assumptions about how audiences best respond to the themes we are treating. If you want people to care about the bunch of stuff (scientific instruments, documents, tools, trinkets, whatever) we are showing, the usual tactic is to provide a name, some biography and a portrait. If those portraits evoke sympathy and interest, all the better. Thus, while I have concluded that my ’19thC scientific hotties’ are not the answer to eschewing anniversaries as a hook for introducing my historic characters, I nevertheless found it helpful to think about personal reactions to these images, with their ability – part of their original intention – to inspire the viewer with a whole range of emotions.

Dorset’s cabinets of curiosity

My Easter break took me to Dorset’s Jurassic Coast for a few days of walks, searching for fossils on the beach and skipping showers by heading into second-hand book shops and little museums. The weather, and the light, were gloriously changeable.

Both of these images were taken at West Bay, near Bridport, one on and the other below the strikingly golden sandstone cliffs.

The museums, despite being of fairly similar size, were equally variable. All had something to offer, and evidently had enthusiastic staff and good relationships with local schools, but differences in funding (perhaps), the imagination and knowledge of curators (probably), the possibilities of the location (certainly) and use by visitors all played their part in making our visits more or less engaged.

The common themes, unsurprisingly, were the area’s relationship with the sea and the unrivalled geological heritage. There were more ammonites than several sticks could be shaken at, and more than a handful of Mary Annings. Anning, of course, was the 19th-century Lyme Regis woman who followed her father into business as a vendor of fossils, making her name with a series of extraordinary finds, including an ichthyosaur skeleton when she was only 12. Anning’s sales were not just to visitors and local school children – although they bought from her shop too – but to the metropolitan geological elites, like Henry de la Beche, William Buckland and Richard Owen. These and many other visiting geologists were shown around the beaches, learnt the tricks of the trade and gained from the knowledge of Miss Anning.

Of the three main museum visits we made, perhaps the most disappointing was the Dinosaur Museum in Dorchester. To be fair, we visited on a very wet Easter Monday with a ton of other kids and parents, but its rather Jurassic Park-style flyers and fairly hefty entry price led us to hope for more than a series of rather disorganised rooms with dog-eared labels and interpretation panels in various styles crowding the walls. There were useful attempts to reach a range of learning styles – lift-up things, feel-inside things, listen-to-things, films, computer displays – but it felt a little as if each new idea was thrown into the mix, lacking a sense of general approach or coherence. The same was true for real fossils, replicas and models, meaning that the most important artefacts could get completely lost. A quieter day, or a more organised visit, might, of course, do a great deal more with everything that was there.

On the same wet day we also took in the local history-focused Bridport Museum. This was bound to be a winner for me as it told the story of Bridport’s rope and net-making industries (in which my grandfather had worked for decades), although it was, perhaps, a little too book-on-the-wall, text-panel heavy. The main gallery was, however, complimented by a newer display focusing on oral history. The small room of fossils worked for my son – some touching allowed, but an uncluttered and impressive display. Upstairs, small collections of flint tools and Roman artefacts gave a sense of the long history of the area. Slightly randomly, the neighbouring rooms included local sporting activities, coastal erosion and costume but, I guess, this the the eclectic joy of a local history collection and small museum. The bonus was that it was all free – which meant, in fact, that we came back for a second visit.

My favourite visit, perhaps predictably, was to the Lyme Regis Museum. It is a wonderfully eccentric building, in a lovely town, with fantastic links to science, art and literature. The quality of displays is reflected in the website, which allows a full tour of the galleries. It is, as it always has been, largely volunteer-run but the more-than-100-year history of the place, and the interest of both visitors and locals in Lyme, its landscape and history, have created a lovely museum experience. As their website says, “Our collections are unusually rich for a small museum and we have a lot of good stories to tell”. Three stories stick with me. One, of course, is Mary Anning’s life, work, collections and connections (you’ve got to love a table made of fossilised poo – thanks Miss A and Dr Buckland!), another is part of the museum’s own history, with its curator John Fowles, author of The French Lieutenant’s Woman, and, finally, there was a display relating to shipwreck and rescue, which brought home the ordinary danger of living with the sea.

The success of the Lyme museum was, above all, ensured by the quality of the collections. However, one of the standout exhibits was actually an interactive display for children called the Cabinet of Curiosities, borrowed from the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site. This could not have worked had there been more than about three children trying to use it together, but with space and time to explore, it was great fun with a huge amount of interest literally packed into a box. You can get some idea of it from the website of the artist-designers. And as you can see here, it certainly attracted  those of the right height:

It had drawers to open, small fossils to look at with small magnifying glasses, things to look at from below, geological layers to manipulate, a geological timeline running all round the exterior, a kind of monster-dinosaur and mirrors mirage inside the box and, my favourite part, a little theatre showing an animated film about the faking of fossils in the 19th century:

It goes to show what good imagination and research can achieve in a very small space. It was definitely not just for kids, although the size and height – and the ability to get underneath it – certainly made them feel it was designed especially for them. Geological collecting perhaps lends itself particularly well to the cabinet conceit, but I suspect that it would be a fun, and probably useful, exercise to think about how any topic  might be presented in a similar way. Every home/museum/school should have one!

Preparing for the transit

I have recently been working on a small display at the Royal Observatory (opening next month) called Measuring the Universe. Despite being small-scale the topic is – in every sense – vast. We are trying to cover the history of measurements of the scale of the solar system, the distance to the nearest stars, the space between galaxies and to the Cosmic Microwave Background. This takes us from the Earth to the edge of the known universe, and from Greeks to researchers today. [Read more]

Objects and storytelling

Some weeks ago on the Medical Museion blog, Thomas Soderqvist wrote an interesting and, perhaps, provocative post on Narrativity in exhibition making, suggesting that “the current enthusiasm” for stories, storytelling and narrative in object displays “is problematic”. As an historian, this idea fits into my training: I understand where Thomas is coming from and largely agree: go read the post. Yet, as someone, still relatively new to and totally untrained for the role of museum professional, I find that it goes very much against the process of developing displays as I have, so far, experienced it.

All the mangers, decision-makers, designers, interpretation specialists and educators want to know “what’s the story?”. They, and those who agree on what things the museum acquires, want to know (among other things) “what stories?” any particular object tells. The first step in creating an exhibition usually seems to be developing “the narrative”, which is then all too easily simply illustrated with a selection of objects. When things are working more satisfactorily, it might be that the available objects (in one institution, or a range of institutions) help to suggest the themes and narrative, but so far this has not really been my experience – and “the story” remains dominant in planning either way.

Some stories, though, are important, and need to be told in relevant museums. Such stories, too, might vary in how they are told. Thomas suggests that when we talk about narrative we are excluding other rhetorical modes: exposition, description, argument. I, however, would suggest that “the narrative” might be, or certainly include elements of, one or more these approaches. The good storyteller, like the good orator, can reach for a range of modes and tones. Where things become awkward, though, is when an object is used to help tell a story or illustrate a point that it, as a particular, individual item, has very little to do with. I suspect that almost every exhibition will have a multitude of little lies, told with the greater purpose of clarifying a narrative for visitors. We would, surely, never take a quote out of context in the way that objects get (mis)appropriated.

Lack a 16-century whatsisname in order to make the point that such things were used by so-and-so in whereeveritis? Stick in an 18th-century one, and the basic point will be made. Thingamabobs used by ordinary people in the 18th century no longer survive, of course, so we might as well use an ornate, one-off version made as a playthings for a wealthy gent, no one will notice. Etc. Etc.

Thinking about objects and storytelling reminded me of the recent media playing of this mode. Above all, of course, there was the very successful BBC Radio 4 and British Musuem A History of the Work in 100 Objects. There was a huge amount to enjoy and admire in this, and it gave a chance for curators and others to highlight the many different ideas and narratives to which a single object might seem to speak. Yet, when setting one of the programmes as a ‘reading’ for an MSc class, it was noticeable how many of the stories included actually had almost nothing to do with the object selected. It had become simply a handy hook on which to hang some other stuff.

This series has been successful enough to pave the way for others. The In Our Time special this January, The Written World, similarly took rare objects from a national collection and allowed Melvyn, curators and academics to take up various threads of a larger narrative. Radio 4 has also been working on a series inspired by objects from the Royal Collections, which does similarly and likewise (although the Queen owns this stuff, not the nation). Undoubtedly it is good to give some of these amazing things an airing, and it is great to have some real experts talking about them, led by good, story-telling presenters.

Perhaps the best thing would be to continue such exhibitions, events and programmes. The more the better, and the range of objects and ways in which they can be used increase. To that end, some museums encourage external responses to displays and objects. The NMM online object catalogue, for example, encourages adding information, whether it reflects expertise or idiosyncrasy. If you wish to group NMM objects by colour, form or fictional narrative, you are free to do so. Few of these are likely to work for other visitors and to gain wide interest and circulation, but it’s nice to think that some might someday influence a display – a temporary, small one, at least.

Science in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery

This week I was back in Edinburgh, for a workshop on ‘Geography, technology and instruments of exploration c.1780-1960′ at the Institute of Geography (where I did my postdoc on the British Association for the Advancement of Science). More, I hope, on the paper I presented in due course. This post relates instead to an extra-curricula visit to another newly renovated Edinburgh institution (see my Longitude Blog post on the National Museum of Scotland) – the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.

The old place was looking wonderful, especially dressed in its Christmas finery. I have always enjoyed the quaint Scottish National Galleries’ habit of having a tartan-trousered assistant open to door to each visitor (so much morer welcoming than automatic doors!), and it feels particularly apt when they usher you into a richly-coloured, Victorian hall, with Christmas tree and, in fact, the master of the house (aka the director) entertaining a group at its foot.

The effect was, of course, particularly lustrous because of the recent cleaning of the murals by William Hole (see this nice video on the work done and the team involved). Most strikingly, these include a frieze of famous Scots: kings, queens, writers, engineers, men of science, artists and politicians from prehistory to mid-century. It is, as said on the video, Scotland’s Valhalla.

I picked out this angle to get in two of the historical figures who, as well as having sported tartan trews from time to time, featured prominently in my book as men of science who played a role in the depiction and celebration of Newton in the 19th century. They also link into a host of British institutions, from the BAAS to the Edinburgh Review to the British parliament. One is Henry, Lord Brougham, the other David Brewster, who was born on this very day, 11 December, in 1781. They were friends and colleagues, working in the field of experimental optics, as well as public figures – Lord Chancellor for Brougham and Principal of the University of St Andrews for Brewster, as suggested by the robes shown here.

Also in this shot is David Livingstone (I presume) and Roderick Murchison, both apt in honour of this week’s geographical workshop, as well as Charles Lyell and more. Just out of shot is George Stephenson (given as Stevenson) holding a model lighthouse, and Mungo Park (who wrote a letter to Astronomer Royal Nevil Maskelyne that I discussed in my talk in Wednesday). Elsewhere, of course, we have John Napier, John Hunter, James Hutton, Thomas Telford and James Watt betwixt and between the likes of Burns, Boswell and Scott, Adam Smith and David Hume, Dundas and Wilkie.

Something I had not previously noted, however, was the ceiling of the Main Hall, probably because it was so dingy until the recent cleaning. It turns out to be a celestial map of the northern hemisphere, with the stars in gold and the imagery of the constellations in deliberately low-key shades of blue on blue. There are, apparently, 2222 stars, and the gallery would be delighted if you would consider adopting one.

I have developed a bit of an interest in William Hole, the artist, because it turns out that he once lived in the house my mum moved into a few years ago – complete with artist’s studio at the end of the garden. He is considered a peripheral pre-Raphaelite, admired for his engravings and a stalwart of the Scottish Royal Academy exhibitions. Interestingly, before a period of European travel and his return to Edinburgh for his artistic training, he was an apprentice civil engineer. It was obviously not to be his calling, but his depiction of several engineers with their models and drawings suggests he still saw it as a noble calling, and part of Scotland’s national genius. He was also deeply religious, and Scotland’s spiritual past, from Druidary to the first Christian missionaries and saints, stands here too, beneath the grand history and battle murals on the first floor and the northern skies rising over all.

Just beyond these first floor murals, there is currently a small area of the galleries devoted to a display called Pioneers of Science. I imagine that they could have filled a very great deal more space with the Scottish science, medicine and engineering portraits in the collection than the small selection shown here. It is a taster only, which is perhaps apt for a reopened, redisplayed gallery, and I look forward to future large exhibitions that continue to explore such themes as the SNPG has done in the past. Here, in the mean time, you’ll find a bust of Alexander Flemming cheek by jowl (as it were) with a taxidermist’s death mask of Dolly the sheep (courtesy of the NMS).

It is difficult to make any very profound comments about the selection. Several are obviously chosen for the renown of the individual or their achievement – John Logie Baird, Lord Kelvin – but several are rather less famous. Those of chemist James Dewar and embryologist Bill Ritchie are evocative in depicting the equipment and working spaces of laboratory science in the early 20th and 21st centuries respectively. You can see these and several other images from the display here.

The largest painting, and the one that is used for the flyer, takes the viewer somewhere quite different from the rather standard images surrounding. It is Ken Currie’s 2002 Three Oncologists. I have seen it before, but it remained for me a genuinely striking, not to say fear-inducing, painting. It is a portrait of three distinguished professors – RJ Steele, Sir Alfred Cuschieri and Sir David P Lane – of the Department of Surgery and Moleular Oncology at Ninewells Hospital in Dundee. Rather than being celebrated as distinguished pillars of the medical or, indeed, social establishment, they are ghostly, horrible figures, luminous against a dark background, disturbed in their work, with stern or depressed faces and blood, literally, on their hands. As the caption says, it is full of the “horror and anxiety associated with cancer”.

I wonder what these men made of their portraits, and the overriding negativity toward their presumably preferred self-image as healers or caregivers. There is plenty of Burke and Hare and Jekyll and Hyde here, to suit the Edinburgh location. For me, the image seems to be full of the kind of fear people have of the word cancer before their or a loved one’s diagnosis. When it becomes reality the horror ends up being so much more full of ordinary everydayness, nurses, hospitals and, ultimately, of the sick person than the senior specialists. However, the painting is certainly testament to the very different role of and expectations surrounding portraiture in the 21st century. A long, long way from the vision of William Hole or the gallery’s founding inspiration, Thomas Carlyle.