2008/02/01 by Geoffrey N. Swinney · 3 citations
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #History of Science and Natural History #Museums and Cultural Heritage #Historical and Literary Studies
paper · doi:10.1080/08912960701677036
openalex publication_date 2008/02/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
This paper examines the role of natural history models in museum displays in the second half of the nineteenth century and in the early decades of the twentieth century. In particular it considers the 257 Blaschka models of invertebrate animals and some of the other natural history models acquired by the Edinburgh Museum of Science and Art (subsequently the Royal Scottish Museum, now part of National Museums Scotland). Attention is given to the intellectual context in which the models were acquired and subsequently displayed, and to their ‘career trajectory’ from being instructional technologies to becoming the subjects of discourses on the art of nature and the nature of art.