Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
rial, UCL, and King's) and to a lesser extent with Oxford and Cam-
bridge. For the same reasons, they also frequented the showrooms of the
leading London-based scientific instrument suppliers and manufacturers,
which were a leading force in the industry up to the 1960s. Although
there is no evidence that the curators favored one firm's products over
another, some companies were better than others at donating objects, as I
know well from personal experience. Up to the mid-1960s, firms often
lent objects on the assumption they could be 'silently' replaced by more
up-to-date models over the years, although in practice the museum often
retained the initial object. It has to be emphasized however, that 'brand-
ed' instruments always formed a minority of the museum's chemistry
collections, at least until recently.
In theory a new gallery could have a client, an external person or
body, who has funded or at least has provided moral support for its con-
struction. Certainly this would almost invariably be the case nowadays,
but most of the galleries considered here were developed without exter-
nal funding and the only client-funder was the government. But when
there has been an external sponsor, we have taken the client's aspirations
for the gallery into account, but have also taken great care not to give a
client any undue influence on a gallery's content. At the same time, in-
dustrial and institutional sponsors (notably ICI and the Royal Institute/
Society of Chemistry) have shaped the content of galleries over the years
by offering advice, making donations of objects, making exhibits (for in-
stance, the model of an ammonia plant in the 1977 Industrial Chemistry
Gallery) and by generally stimulating the development of the content.
For example, the Royal Society of Chemistry set up working parties to
produce interactives for the 1999 Chemistry Gallery.
There is, however, one key aspect of the development of galleries
which has not been widely understood and that is the importance of the
curators' 'constituency'. Curators have historically had a dual role simi-
lar to that of Members of Parliament. On one hand they represent the
museum to their external constituency and on the other they are the rep-
resentatives of that constituency within the museum. The chemistry gal-
leries have largely been a product of this curatorial interaction with their
constituency. But what is a 'constituency' in this context? It can be de-
fined as a group of educated people that a curator enjoys strong links
