Natural History Museums

Natural History Museum

The history museums of Galeries de Palentologie et d’Anatomie and Grande Galerie de l’Evolution are about the evolution of life. How animals have evolved and changed over time. Starting with the Palentogie and anatomy museum, it is reminiscent of the Fragonard. Upon walking in it is set up so that you are consumed by the mass amounts of animal skeletons that appear to be charging at you. Along the sides there are cabinets filled with multiples of the same skeletons. It is a warehouse for the grand collection that the museum has acquired. The challenge of a museum like this is that with such inanimate objects how does the museum bring them to life, and reinvent the living. Engaging you audience, and knowing who your audience is. The anatomy museum did this by looking through the eyes of a child. They animated there skeletons by having them climb up trees, or stampede in the one direction. There was also a hint of technology involved with videos of how the animals acted in real life. The museum managed to separate the different genres by floor so you had animals on the first, dinosaurs on the second, and fossils on the third, a deeper look into evolution from the third floor down. In chapter 16 of Comp MS Tony Bennett discusses the organization of a museum space as it pertains to the visitor. “It could only be made visible by displaying –side by side- forms of life, or artifacts, that both resembled each other and yet were also different, and to do so in a manner that suggested that those differences had resulted from the passage of time.” Pg 270. 

The Grande Galerie de l’Evoltion although dealing with a similar topic of evolution but displayed in a completely different manner. All of the animals are taxidermy so that they feel like there is life in each animal. The space is grand almost like it could be used for other purposes, and not just a museum. There are interactive lights, technology, and the museum tackles not only evolution, but pollution, extinction, and contemporary topics. Ex what are animal furs used for nowadays? Most of the displays are open in the air and are not sealed off in cabinets. The display strategies used are meant so that children and adults can engage with the objects, by learning, reading, and getting up close. 

Science is present in both museums; however it is not made to be obvious. You are looking at evolution and scientific topics, but to get into the science of the displays you have to look closely at the objects and understand the history. An example would be in the Grand Galerie on the third floor there are three miniature scenes that show the evolution of the city of Paris, and how it went from being green lush woodland to a bustling city over the past couple of centuries. It then goes into the science of how human kind has developed to create what we need, instead of keeping what we should. 

For science museums it is important that they have these public exhibition spaces. Unlike art which in part is put to just look and admire. Science is there to teach, and by having these giant spaces they are able to engage audiences, and help them understand such theories of evolution by showing them. Tony Bennett explains this with the first examples of the evolutionary museum.  “ This was, then, a developmental order which enjoined the ‘evolutionary showmen,’ who aimed to translate the principals of Darwinism into museum displays, to do so in ways that would make the lessons of evolution, and the political conclusions to be drawn from those lessons, readily perceptible.” Pg 269.  

When walking into either of these museums, you feel as if time has come to a stand-still. There is something sad about the objects stagnant in their positions, knowing that they had once been alive and free. By putting objects in chronological order that is the most obvious way of displaying time, another which is what the Grande Gallerie did is putting them into sections. For example the gallery of extinction, the visitor then understands they are walking into different parts of time. Each has constructed its own world, and its own vision. The Anatomy museum presented the feeling of an old world that once existed and you were part of a piece of history, the building was much like a warehouse with iron bars on the ceiling and old wooden floors. However, the Grande Gallerie gave a modern flair to an old subject, by making the building huge with glass elevators and marble floors. That created a feeling of time travel that enraptured the visitor. 

I find it is important to have science museums to help teach society about such topics. They are a major aid in our understanding of where we have come from. Plus there are just good fun.