Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
lery gave over some of its limited space to French chemists. In the 1977
redisplay, there were 19 cases in the historical display in Gallery 41 de-
voted to British chemists and only the equivalent of 2 cases to foreign
chemists (Lavoisier, van Helmont, Kipp, and Döbereiner).
6. Conclusions
The most striking feature of this study of chemistry in museums has been
the persistence of a particular style of presenting chemistry in a given
museum during the twentieth century. The Science Museum did shift
ground, especially in its presentation of historical chemistry, in the 1920s
but has remained faithful to the model adopted in 1923 for the last eighty
years. The basic format of the chemistry displays at the Deutsches
Museum has been unchanged since it opened in 1906. The Conservatoire
has always concentrated on Lavoisier. The Smithsonian (in its current
guise as the National Museum of American History) is the exception. Its
'Science in American Life' gallery is very different from earlier presen-
tation of chemistry - even the focus of the reconstructed laboratory
switched from Priestley to Remsen - and this is currently the only chem-
istry gallery which draws extensively on the modern historiography of
science and technology. It has been criticized for presenting too negative
a view of science but it also stands in a broad tradition of being fairly
neutral in its support of chemistry and science. It may be more quizzical
about the benefits of science than its counterparts elsewhere, but none of
the leading chemistry galleries have promoted chemistry in the extra-
vagant manner of many popular books on chemistry, the archetype of the
latter of course being A. Cressy Morrison's
Man in a Chemical World
(1937). But if all the chemistry galleries have been quietly understated in
their support of chemistry, there are differences between them. The
Science Museum (along with the Conservatoire and the Smithsonian) has
always been immensely dependent on state funding and thus it has
always highlighted on the public value of chemistry (medicine and
quality control) and the use of chemistry by the state (notably the Labo-
ratory of the Government Chemist). The Deutsches Museum on the other
hand, although formally administered by the State of Bavaria, has always
been associated, as far as chemistry is concerned, with the German
