Museums of Modern Science (review)

Museums of Modern Science. Edited by Svante Lindqvist. Canton, Mass.: Watson, Science History Publications, 2000. Pp. xii+200. $39.95/$24.95.

Historians of technology love to talk about museums. Whether the conversation is about artifacts or exhibitions, institutional politics or public policy, the museum evokes a remarkable degree of passion and fascination. Conferences about museums involving historians of technology occur with some regularity, often followed by anthologies based on presentations at these conferences. The latest is Museums of Modern Science, a wonderful collection that stems from a 1999 symposium sponsored by the Nobel Museum and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences' Center for History of Science.

It is a "wonderful" collection because it is provocative. In myriad (and interesting) ways, symposium participants grapple with the question: "How should museums explain science?" (It should be noted that the boundary between science and technology is a blurry one in this volume.) Readers will find themselves alternately agreeing and disagreeing with the authors' views and interpretations. Collectively, these essays make an important contribution to the discourse on the theory and function of science museums.

Editor Svante Lindqvist has grouped the essays into four broad, if somewhat imperfect, categories that presumably reflect the organization of the conference. The first section includes four essays by senior museum directors and curators in Britain, Germany, France, and the United States. Here the emphasis is on museums (as opposed to exhibitions), as each author explores the role of the science museum in contemporary society both broadly and through the lens of their home institution. Particularly engaging is Neil Cossons's thoughtful "Museums in the New Millennium," which opens the book.

The four essays in the second section shift the focus to exhibition and artifact, acknowledging the struggle to find explanations that are neither too simple nor too complex. However, it is clear that these authors perceive the real dilemma to lie in deciding what it is that needs to be explained. Jim Bennett's "Beyond Understanding: Curatorship and Access in Science Museums" and Simon Schaffer's "Object Lessons" are especially good pieces, the former emphasizing exhibitions, the latter artifacts.

As important as the determination of exhibition content is, the means of disseminating that information is of equal significance. The four excellent essays in the third section of the book supply a reasonable cross section of the concepts most in vogue and accurately reflect the museum community's current fascination with computer technology. What will interest readers of Technology and Culture are the discussions about the "virtual" artifact. The authors of these essays, like the museum community, are not in agreement, but they offer new insights into an old debate about the merits of reproductions and reenactments.

The final section contains four essays, plus concluding remarks by John Heilbron, on the specific issue of how science museums have addressed their most difficult problem: controversy. Sometimes the controversy is about the exhibition (for example, the Enola Gay at the National Air and Space Museum) and sometimes the exhibition is about controversy (for example, genetically engineered foods). With the exception of Robert Friedel's intriguing piece on the "Y2K problem," this set of essays is somewhat less compelling.

Technology and Culture readers interested in museums will find this book useful, as most essays address the subject of technology. Though dominated by representatives of large British and American institutions, the collection is clearly international in scope, and there is a genuine diversity of observation and analysis. But there is also a significant weakness. It is critical for historians to understand that the locus of intellectual discourse about museums has shifted to the education community. It is not that SHOT or other professional historical societies are irrelevant, but the influential debates now take place elsewhere. Thus, this book should be viewed as a primer on issues and ideas already well known to the museum community rather than a pioneering work in the field. It is an exceedingly engaging collection, however, one that I hope will encourage historians of...