Museums produced natural knowledge and were themselves architectural spectacles," writes Carla Yanni. "As such, they comprise a rich cultural site suggestive of interdisciplinary historical study." In Nature's Museums, Yanni brings together the history of architecture and history of science in an engaging study of how the Victorians approached the housing and display of scientific artifacts. Focusing on the Oxford University Museum, the Edinburgh Museum of Science and Art, and the Natural History Museum of London, Yanni explores how such institutions reflected varying, often contradictory concepts of nature--from the handiwork of God to a resource to be exploited. She explains how the rise of museums accompanied and influenced the transformation of science from a "gentleman's hobby" to a paying profession. And she shows how the buildings themselves remain invaluable guides to the Victorians' ambiguous perception of the natural world. Through careful social and historical accounts of the buildings, their displays, and their reception, Yanni's work deepens our understanding of the emerging power of museums in Darwin's century. "Piled high with bones and stuffed animals, natural history museums were the primary places of interaction between natural science and its diverse publics. Studies of the natural world (what we now think of as biology and geology) were changing and conflicted disciplines, and thus no single vision of nature emerged in the Victorian period. Consequently, architects could not devise any one distinctive building type ...Nature's Museums analyzes how the architecture of selected natural history museums in Britain contributed to the legitimization of knowledge."--from Nature's Museums "Yanni's thorough, scholarly work focuses on a very specific slice of mid- to late-19th-century British history: the construction of buildings for the display of natural history collections. Yanni writes as much social history as architectural history, describing the evolving impact of Darwin's evolutionism as the field of natural history emerged as a distinct discipline."--Choice "Very readable and beautifully illustrated."--Nicolaas A. Rupke, Albion "The Victorians are celebrated for their science and their spectacular public buildings. Nature's Museums unites these concerns in an exciting and original analysis. It is a major contribution to our understanding of the history of public architecture, scientific practice, and the cultural life of the Victorian era."--Jim Secord, University of Cambridge "A fascinating study of how some of the most important museums of the Victorian period came to be built, arguing that museum building and the display of natural knowledge were sites of intense cultural conflict. Well illustrated with many previously unknown drawings and plans, the book shows how ideas about the nature of vision, and of seeing natural history in Victorian Britain, were worked through in display and the design of buildings."--Sophie Forgan, University of Teesside

About the Author

Carla Yanni is an assistant professor of art history at Rutgers University

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