Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
with and wishes to gratify and impress. Although it is often said that cu-
rators create galleries for other curators, this has never been the case for
the chemistry galleries, partly for the lack of any similar curators to im-
press. The chemistry curator's constituency is first and foremost other
chemists, including biochemists and industrial chemists, particularly
leading chemists and chemical educators. Chemical societies and indus-
trial chemical organizations also play an important role, but less than
might be imagined. Their influence has greatly varied from gallery to
gallery and thus over time. Historians of chemistry and other historians
of science have become increasingly important members of the constitu-
ency, especially since the formation of the Society for the History of Al-
chemy and Chemistry in 1937, but their influence has never been as great
as that of the chemists. This constituency can easily be distinguished
from the Advisory Council as the board always included only a small
number of chemists. There were no chemists on the Advisory Council in
the 1920s, and Trevor Williams, the historian of chemistry and editor of
Endeavour , was one of the few chemists in the 1970s. Professor Arthur
Smithells, who advised the museum on the chemistry display in the early
1920s, was never on the Advisory Council; and Professor Edward T.
Hall, a key advisor to the curators during the 1977 redisplay of the chem-
istry galleries, only joined the Advisory Council two years later in 1979.
While this lack of chemists on the council gives this constituency a
heightened importance, I would argue it would always have been more
important as it was a larger group and furthermore a group close to the
curators' own intellectual and social milieu, for instance, through meet-
ings of the Chemical Society at Burlington House, Annual Chemical
Congresses, and social events at the Royal Institution. It has to be em-
phasized that this constituency has never been the target audience for the
gallery, the actual audience for the gallery, or even an influential group
of visitors. Paradoxically many members of this group rarely visited the
museum. They influenced the gallery at the planning stage not as com-
mentators on an existing gallery. Their direct experience of the museum
would have taken place when they were schoolchildren or students. In
more recent times, they would have only seen the chemistry galleries on
special occasions, such as gallery openings, or when taking their children
or grandchildren to the museum.
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