No. 16 (2017): julio-diciembre
Essay

From Natural History to Modern Biology: Machines, Robots and Flight Decks in the Natural History Museum (NHM), London, United Kingdom

PDF (Spanish) HTML (Spanish)
  • Gustavo Corral Guillé
Gustavo Corral Guillé
Investigador independiente, México
Bio

Published 2025-01-16

Keywords

  • Natural History Museum,
  • London,
  • science communication,
  • visual methaphors,
  • interactivity

Copyright (c) 2017 Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH)

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

How to Cite

From Natural History to Modern Biology: Machines, Robots and Flight Decks in the Natural History Museum (NHM), London, United Kingdom. (2025). Intervención, Revista Internacional De Conservación, Restauración Y Museología, 16, 5-16. https://doi.org/10.30763/Intervencion.2017.16.179

Abstract

This essay provides an overview of the Natural History Museum (NHM) in London, United Kingdom, between the late 1960s and early 1980s, in order to explore how it changed both its institutional identity as well as its exhibition policy during this period. It intends to demonstrate that, in order to alter its image, the museographic discourse of the NHM stopped focusing on its collection —that is, the natural history specimens— to instead concentrate on the visitors and pay particular attention to the new approach of contemporary biology. To this end, it is posed that Human Biology, the first exhibition of the New Exhibition Program (NEP), was designed in accordance with the reductionist tendencies that characterized contemporary science, structured around the information systems. Hence, through visual metaphors and interactive strategies, Human Biology became a production and legitimization space for a particular scientific point of view, which was very close to that exposed by the external advisers who collaborated in the specification of its museographic contents.

PDF (Spanish) HTML (Spanish)

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

  1. Alt, Michael (1979). “Letter from Alt to unknown addresseed over the critics of Anthony Smith to the Human Biology exhibition”, Londres, Archivo del Museo de Historia Natural, número de referencia DF EXH/700/4.
  2. ______ (1980). “Four years of visitor surveys at the Natural History Museum (1976-1979)”, Londres, Archivo del Museo de Historia Natural, número de referencia DF EXH/701/23/10.
  3. Anón. (1981). “Letter”, Nature 289 (5797): 438.
  4. Arnold, Ken (1996). “Presenting science as product or as process: Museums and the making of science”, en Susan Pearce (ed.), Exploring Science in Museums, Londres, Althone Press, 53-78.
  5. Bloom, Joel (1992). “Science and technology museums face the future”, en J. Durant (ed.), Museums and the Public Understanding of Science, Londres, Science Museum, 15-20.
  6. Cannon, John (1962). “The new Botanical Exhibition Gallery at the British Museum (Natural History)”, Taxon 11 (8): 248-252.
  7. Claringbull, Frank (1974). “New exhibition scheme: aspects of human development”, Londres, Archivo del Museo de Historia Natural, número de referencia DF EXH/700/4/1.
  8. Claringbull, Frank y Lawrence Bragg (1965). Crystal structures of minerals, Londres, George Bell & Sons.
  9. Cloître, Michel y Terry Shinn (1985). “Expository practice. Social, cognitive and epistemological linkage”, en T. Shinn y R. Whitley (eds.), Expository science: Forms and Functions of Popularisation, Dordrecht/Boston/Lancaster, Reidel, 31-60.
  10. Corral, Gustavo (2015). “Museo de Historia Natural de Londres, 1968-1981. Una perspectiva histórica”, tesis de doctorado en historia de la ciencia, Barcelona, Centre d’Història de la Ciència, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (CEHIC-UAB).
  11. ______ (2016). “El Museo de Historia Natural de Londres y su nuevo programa de exposiciones [NPE] en la década de 1970. Perfilando nuevos objetivos educativos”, Boletín de la Real Sociedad Española de Historia Natural, Sección Aula, Museos y Colecciones, 3: 5-19.
  12. Chadarevian, Soraya de (2002). Designs for Life: Molecular Biology after World War II, Nueva York, Cambridge University Press.
  13. CSMI (s.f.). Cognitive Science Movie Index, Department of Cognitive Science, University of California, EE.UU, recurso electrónico disponible en [https://www.indiana.edu/~cogfilms], consultado en abril del 2017.
  14. Doughty, Philip (1978). “‘Britain before man’-a review”, Museums Journal, 78 (2): 54-56.
  15. Fifield, Richard (1977). “Heritage. Birth of Britain”, New Scientist, 76 (1075): 238.
  16. Galison, Peter
  17. ______ (1994). “The ontology of the enemy: Norbert Wiener and the cybernetic vision”, Critical Inquiry, 21: 228-266.
  18. Gardner, Howard (1985). The Mind’s New Science: A History of the Cognitive Revolution, Nueva York, Basic Books.
  19. Gray, Clive (2015). The Politics of Museums, Londres, Palgrave Macmillan.
  20. Greenaway, Frank (1983). “National museums”, Museums Journal, 83 (2): 7-12.
  21. Griggs, Steven (1990). “Perceptions of traditional and new style exhibitions at the Natural History Museum”, ILVS Review, 1 (2): 78-90.
  22. Haraway, Donna (1991). Simians, Cyborgs and Women: the Reinvention of Nature, Nueva York, Routledge.
  23. Horst, Steven (2011). “The computational theory of mind”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, documento electrónico disponible en [https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2015/entries/computational-mind], consultado en marzo del 2017.
  24. Husbands, Phil y Owen Holland (2012). “Warren McCulloch and the British cyberneticians”, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, 37 (3): 237-253.
  25. Kay, Lily (1995). “Who wrote the book of life? Information and the transformation of molecular biology, 1945-55”, Science in Context, 8 (4): 609-634.
  26. Lyotard, Jean François (1979). La condition postmoderne: rapport sur le savoir, París, De Minuit.
  27. Macdonald, Sharon (ed.) (1998). The politics of display: Museums, Science, Culture, Londres, Routledge.
  28. Miles, Roger, Michael Alt, David Gosling, Brian Lewis y Alan Tout (comps.) (1982). The Design of Educational Exhibits, Londres, George Allen & Unwin.
  29. Miles, Roger (1976). “Preliminary report on a visit to 18 museums (sensu lato) in North America and Australia, January and February 1976”, Londres, Archivo del Museo de Historia Natural, número de referencia DF700/4.
  30. ______ (1979). “First draft paper on the origins of the new exhibition scheme”, Londres, Archivo del Museo de Historia Natural, número de referencia DF EXH/700/4.
  31. ______ (1986). “Lessons in ‘Human Biology’”, Museum Management and Curatorship, 5 (3): 227-240.
  32. Miles, Roger y Michael Alt (1979). “British Museum (Natural History): a new approach to the visiting public”, Museums Journal, 78 (4): 158-162.
  33. Miles, Roger y Alan Tout (1978). “Human biology and the new exhibition scheme in the British Museum (Natural History)”, Curator, 21: 36-50.
  34. ______ (1979). “Outline of a technology for effective science exhibits”, en Bassett Matthew (ed.), Curation of palaeontological collections. Special Papers in Palaeontology, vol. 22, Londres, Paleontological Association, 209-224.
  35. Morris, Peter (ed.) (2010). Science for the Nation: Perspectives on the History of the Science Museum, Londres, Palgrave Macmillan.
  36. Natural History Museum (NHM) (1972). “A proposal for a new approach to the visiting public”, Londres, Archivo del Museo de Historia Natural, número de referencia NES DR41.
  37. ______ (1972b). “Trustees Paper 72/9, new exhibition scheme”, Londres, Archivo del Museo de Historia Natural, número de referencia DF933/1012.
  38. ______ (1973). “Trustees Meeting, 22 de febrero de 1973”, Londres, Archivo del Museo de Historia Natural, número de referencia TRU/900/29.
  39. ______ (1974). “A new exhibition on aspects of human development”, Londres, Archivo del Museo de Historia Natural, número de referencia EXH/700/4/1.
  40. ______ (1974b). “Aspects of human development: Specimen Section of design brief”, Londres, Archivo del Museo de Historia Natural, número de referencia DF EXH/700/4/1/10.
  41. ______ (1975). “The new exhibition scheme and its pilot project”, Londres, Archivo del Museo de Historia Natural, número de referencia EXH/700/4/1.
  42. ______ (1977a). Human Biology-An Exhibition of Ourselves [catálogo de la exposición], Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
  43. ______ (1977b). “Opening of the New Paleontology Wing and the Hall of Human Biology on 24 May 1977”, Londres, Archivo del Museo de Historia Natural, número de referencia DF700/4/1/37.
  44. ______ (s.f.). Images, recurso electrónico [página web] disponible en [https://nhmimages.com/en/page/show_home_page.html], consultado en abril del 2017.
  45. ______ (s.f. ). Natural History Museum Archive Catalogue, documento electrónico disponible en [http://www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curation/library/archives/catalogue/DServe.exe?dsqServer=placid&dsqIni=Dserve.ini&dsqApp=Archive&dsqDb=Persons&dsqSearch=Code==%27PX1926%27&dsqCmd=Show.tcl], consultado en marzo del 2017.
  46. Parr, Albert (1959). “Ninetieth annual report of the president”, en American Museum of Natural History, Annual Report of the American Museum of Natural History for 1958, Nueva York, American Museum of Natural History.
  47. Pearson, Lynn (1981). The Organization of the Energy Industry, Londres, Palgrave Macmillan.
  48. Perks, Sue (2012). “A definition of the principles of Isotype and an investigation into their methods of diffusion and legacy”, tesis de doctorado en comunicación visual, Reading, University of Reading.
  49. Pedretti, Erminia (2002). “T. Kuhn meets T. Rex: critical conversations and new directions in science centres and science museums”, Studies in Science Education, 37 (1): 1-41.
  50. Rader, Karen y Victoria Cain (2014). Life on Display: Revolutionizing U. S. Museums of Science and Natural History in the Twentieth Century, Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
  51. Rosen, Brian (2010). Comunicación personal, entrevista realizada por Cathcart Brian para el proyecto de historia oral Museum Lives, Centre for Arts and Humanities Research, Natural History Museum, 16 de febrero de 2010.
  52. Rumelhart, David, Peter Lindsay y Donald Norman (1972). “A process model for long-term memory”, en Endel Tulving y Wayne Donaldson (eds.), Organization of Memory, Nueva York, Academic Press, 197-246.
  53. Seddon, Abell (1979). “An open letter on exhibition in natural history museums”, Newsletter of the Geological Curators Group, 2 (4): 200.
  54. Stearn, William (1981). The Natural History Museum at South Kensington: A History of the British Museum, Londres, Heinemann.
  55. Touraine, Alain (1969). La sociedad post-industrial, Barcelona, Ariel.
  56. Vergo, Peter (1989). The New Museology, Londres, Reaktion Books Ltd.
  57. Whitehead, Peter y Colin Keates (1981). “The British Museum (Natural History)”, Londres, Scala/Philip Wilson.
  58. Woolley, Alan (2014). Comunicación personal, 19 de agosto de 2014.