Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
the museum in 1984 to become Director of the Royal Scottish Museum
(subsequently the National Museums of Scotland). The chemistry de-
partment was then amalgamated with the physics department and the
new Keeper was the former Keeper of Physics, David Thomas (who had
been an Assistant Keeper of Chemistry between 1961 and 1973). During
this period Robert Bud curated a new chemical industry gallery spon-
sored by ICI in 1986. On Thomas's retirement in 1987 he was succeeded
by Derek Robinson who had become Keeper of Museum Services in
1978. He was given the new title of Head of Physical Sciences when the
keeperships were abolished soon afterwards. Robinson took personal
charge of Industrial Chemistry and Ann Newmark was Senior Curator of
Experimental Chemistry. When Newmark became Head of Documenta-
tion in 1991, she was succeeded by Peter Morris who also took over In-
dustrial Chemistry on the retirement of Derek Robinson in 1999 (by then
Head of Physical Sciences & Engineering). The chemistry galleries on
the second floor were cleared in the same year and replaced by a much
smaller gallery entitled 'The Chemistry of Everyday Life'. The industrial
chemistry gallery was cleared a few years later in 2004.
3.
Gallery Development at the Science Museum
From my own experience as a curator and drawing on the experiences of
my colleagues and former colleagues at the Science Museum, I believe
that it is possible to show how the development of a new gallery is
shaped by external factors; for a very different view of gallery develop-
ment by an external observer, see Macdonald 2002. Up to now, all the
chemistry galleries at the Science Museum have been put together, if not
explicitly designed, by curators. In order to understand the development
of these galleries we need to understand the environment in which these
curators operate. We have to begin with the curators themselves. Nearly
all the curators who have had a major influence on the chemistry
galleries have been chemists, at least four of them were even Fellows of
the Royal Society of Chemistry or its predecessor, the Royal Institute of
Chemistry. To a lesser or greater extent they have also been interested in
the history of chemistry and in more recent times, they have been
professionally trained historians of chemistry. In passing it should also
