Life on Display: Revolutionizing US museums of science and natural history in the twentieth century, by Karen A Rader and Victoria EM Cain

Synopsis: 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.

Published: October 2014 | ISBN: 9780226598734

Mini-bio: Karen A. Rader is associate professor in the Department of History at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Karen’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/raderkaren

Mini-bio: Victoria E. M. Cain is assistant professor in the Department of History at Northeastern University.

“The exquisite dioramas in New York’s American Museum of Natural History have wowed crowds since the early twentieth century. But as historians Karen Rader and Victoria Cain reveal in this cogent study, they were part of a broader revolution: the ‘New Museum Idea,’ which saw ‘smell machines’ and dynamic models supersede dusty cases. The behind-the-scene struggles between ‘edutainers’ and serious museum researchers were, they show, no less dynamic.” – Barbara Kiser | Nature

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