Nature and culture Objects, disciplines and the Manchester Museum [Paperback]

This is a vital new work; the first to take the University of Manchester's Museum as its subject. By setting the museum in its cultural and intellectual contexts, Nature and culture explores twentieth-century collecting and display, and the status of the object in the modern world. Beginning with the origins of the Manchester Museum, accounting for its development as an internationally renowned university museum, and concluding at its major expansion at the turn of the millennium, this book casts new light on the history of museums.

How did objects become knowledge? Who encountered museum objects on their way to museums? What happened to collections within the museum? How did visitors use and respond to objects? In answering these questions, Nature and culture illuminates not only the history of one institution, but also contributes to wider discussions in the history of science, cultural history and museology.

List of figures

Acknowledgements

List of abbreviations

Introduction: museum historiographies

I. Museums and disciplines

II. The lives of objects

Notes

1. Prologue: the Manchester Natural History Society

I. The Museum on Peter Street

II. Visitors and staff

III. Transfer and dissolution

Notes

2. Nature: scientific disciplines in the museum

I. Unified nature 1887-1910

II. Expanding collections 1910-50

III. Nature dislocated 1950-90

IV. Conclusion: cultural cartography and the Museum

Notes

3. Culture: artefacts and disciplinary formation

I. Culture precipitated 1890-1927

II. Nature and culture distinguished 1927-69

III. Culture consolidated 1969-90

IV. Conclusion: shaping disciplines

Notes

4. Acquisition: collecting networks and the museum

I. Foundation and empire

II. The economy of donation

III. Value for money?

IV. The museum and the field

V. Translc%