Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
spite the Deutsches Museum's best efforts. As the practice of science be-
comes increasingly interdisciplinary and the teaching of science becomes
largely the teaching of general science at least in Britain, the single-
discipline gallery has become outmoded. The first gallery in a major sci-
ence museum to completely integrate different scientific disciplines was
the 'Science in American Life' gallery at the National Museum of
American History which opened in 1994. This is not wholly surprisingly
as the galleries at the Washington museum were always multi-disci-
plinary if not interdisciplinary (Smithsonian Guide 1976). The Science
Museum's multidisciplinary science gallery is projected to open in 2009,
the museum's centenary year. This gallery will be built around the
themes of belief, power, and trust, and will cover astronomy, mathemat-
ics, physics, geophysics, and biomedicine as well as chemistry. A par-
ticular feature of this gallery will be its coverage of non-western science.
The goal of this gallery is to promote scientific citizenship by illustrating
the relationships which have existed and currently exist between science
and its publics and within science. The target audience will have a sig-
nificantly lower age limit than the chemistry galleries considered here, as
the new gallery is aimed at school groups aged 10 and above, parents
with children aged 10 and above, and independent adults. Chemistry will
be well represented in the science gallery but inevitably its footprint in
the Science Museum will be much smaller than in the period when there
were three chemistry galleries (1964-1999). The Deutsches Museum is
also transforming the way it presents chemistry with the aim of opening a
new chemistry gallery in 2008. One way or another, museum curators
will continue to present chemistry in new multi-disciplinary and histo-
riographically sophisticated contexts which will draw on the best muse-
ological traditions while also developing new ways of encouraging visi-
tors to take science seriously.
Acknowledgements
I wish to acknowledge the enormous debt I owe to John Liffen, the
curator of telecommunications at the Science Museum, who is a fount of
knowledge about all aspects of the museum's history. I am also very
grateful to my predecessors at the Science Museum, Dr. Robert
