Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
be noted that they have also been predominantly white and male, and
have gone to leading English universities, especially Oxford and Man-
chester.
As employees of the Science Museum, the work of curators is over-
seen by the Director, once a hands-on manager of new galleries, but now
somebody who has to concentrate on the strategic management of three
museums, and by an advisory council (the Board of Trustees since 1983)
made up of leading scientists, engineers, and other members of the estab-
lishment. Also the government has had some influence, initially through
the Department of Education and Science (and its predecessors) and
more recently via the Department of Culture, Media, and Sport. The gov-
ernment's influence on gallery development deserves closer examination,
but it would be fair to say that it was - until recently - minimal as far as
specific galleries were concerned. As long as the galleries promoted sci-
ence education in a broad sense and did not generate politically embar-
rassing controversy, the Department was happy to leave the content of
the museum's displays to the Director and his staff. Nonetheless, since
the 1960s the government has increasingly pushed museums to seek ex-
ternal funding for new galleries and, since the late 1980s, to cater for in-
creasingly diverse audiences.
As civil servants until 1983, and as government employees even now,
curators operated within a specific institutional ethos. Their personal po-
litical and religious views were not supposed to impinge on the content
of displays, and I have not found any case where this has in fact oc-
curred. The civil service ethos has also ensured that curators have
worked with external bodies and companies in an even-handed manner,
not favoring one firm's products over a rival's, or one institution's re-
search over another. There are some exceptions to this general rule of
neutrality. There has been a tendency to highlight the work done by other
government bodies, such as the Laboratory of the Government Chemist.
The museum has also been supportive of the aims of professional socie-
ties and official industry-wide organizations - such as the Royal Society
of Chemistry and the Association of British Chemical Manufacturers -
and it has worked closely with these organizations over the years. Finally
for geographical and personal reasons, the chemistry curators at the mu-
seum have tended to work closely with leading London colleges (Impe-
