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The Art of Authority: Exhibits, Exhibit-Makers, and the Contest for Scientific Status in the American Museum of Natural History, 1920–1940
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 April 2011
Argument
In the 1920s and 1930s, the growing importance of habitat dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History forced staff members to reconsider what counted as scientific practice and knowledge. Exhibit-makers pressed for more scientific authority, citing their extensive and direct observations of nature in the field. The museum's curators, concerned about their own eroding status, dismissed this bid for authority, declaring that older traditions of lay observation were no longer legitimate. By the 1940s, changes inside and outside the museum had destroyed any lingering notions that what exhibit-makers garnered from observing raw materials constituted scientific knowledge.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Science in Context , Volume 24 , Issue 2: Lay Participation in the History of Scientific Observation , June 2011 , pp. 215 - 238
- Copyright
- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011
References
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