The Art of Authority

Exhibits, Exhibit-Makers, and the Contest for Scientific Status in the American Museum of Natural History, 1920-1940

Bibliographic Data

ID4516471
AuthorsVictoria Cain (New York University, corresponding author)
Year2011
Volume24
Issue2
Pages215-238
Publication date2011-06-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueScience in Context (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0269-8897 • E-ISSN: 1474-0664
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s026988971100007x
OpenAlexW2141380904
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited23

ArgumentIn the 1920s and 1930s, the growing importance of habitat dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History forced staff members to reconsider what counted as scientific practice and knowledge. Exhibit-makers pressed for more scientific authority, citing their extensive and direct observations of nature in the field. The museum's curators, concerned about their own eroding status, dismissed this bid for authority, declaring that older traditions of lay observation were no longer legitimate. By the 1940s, changes inside and outside the museum had destroyed any lingering notions that what exhibit-makers garnered from observing raw materials constituted scientific knowledge

Archaeology · Biology · CONTEST · Environmental ethics · Natural history · Political science · Social science · Sociology · Sociology of scientific knowledge · History · History of Science and Natural History · Law · Philosophy · Philosophy and History of Science · Species Distribution and Climate Change · Ecology

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub