ISBN 978 0 230 23009 5
There is nothing like an anniversary to encourage a publication and, as Peter Morris points out in the introduction, there is no shortage of anniversaries upon which the Science Museum can hang its hat.
This one marks the centenary of the creation of a Science Museum, independent of the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), under whose wing the museum had sheltered for 50 years.
Indeed, even this independence failed to deliver the kind of administrative freedom that had been given to the British Museum in 1753 and the National Maritime Museum in 1934. The Science Museum and the V&A had to wait another 50 years for their own boards of trustees.
Morris has garnered contributions from 11 academics and colleagues, each offering a different “perspective” on topics such as the history of the Science Museum, collecting, temporary exhibitions, the library and stores. The result is a readable and honest portrait of a museum that has taken a long time to come of age.
In the first five chapters, the somewhat erratic history of the museum is handed from one contributor to the next like a baton in a relay race. From time to time, it all becomes a little breathless but, for the most part, Morris has kept his authors, and himself, in check, and encouraged them to speak with candour about their subject.
The museum’s first century has not been easy. The nature of science gave it claim to a broad range of interests, while raising several questions about the role and purpose of a science museum.
Clashes and anxieties were inevitable. Moreover, the creation of the Imperial War Museum in 1920 pitched the Science Museum into a turf war, ostensibly over buildings, but also about its attempt to position itself as a museum of peace, a role it had clearly relinquished by 1938 when it mounted a temporary exhibition entitled Science in the Army.
In the mid-1930s, the Science Museum found itself embroiled in a squabble with the newly established National Maritime Museum over the rightful place for the Science Museum’s model-ship collection.
The National Maritime Museum won, thanks to the intervention of a referee, the Standing Commission on Museums and Galleries. (Now, Mr Hunt, there’s an idea…)
The meandering policies that had characterised the period between two world wars and the questions of role and function that remained unanswered induced a state of “torpor” at the museum and the long illness of the museum’s then-director left the museum “a rudderless ship”.
Between 1930 and 1960, the Science Museum had six directors (compared with two at the V&A). This did the museum no favours and frequently allowed civil servants to make the decisions on which the museum’s future depended.
It took the steady hands of Margaret Weston and Neil Cossons to give the Science Museum the continuity and confidence on which to build an international reputation.
Nowhere is the ambivalence of the Science Museum more clearly illustrated than in its attitude to children. As Anna Bunney reveals in her essay, given the perception of the Science Museum as a “children’s playground”, its attitude towards youngsters has been inconsistent.
Until the creation of the Children’s Gallery in 1931 (and what a dull place that looks to have been), children were tolerated rather than encouraged.
Even after the opening of the basement gallery, there was much “evidence to suggest that an… important function of the Children’s Gallery was to keep children out of the rest of the museum, to leave the more serious visitors in peace”.
I would have liked to have read more about those “more serious visitors”. The big gap in this study is any analysis of the museum’s audience, its nature and numbers. It’s a curious omission.
Although the South Kensington museums owe their origins to the 1851 Great Exhibition, there’s a sense of timelessness about the buildings. Science for the Nation is a reminder that their history is a relatively short one and that they are still in a process of change and development. Long may it last.
Timothy Mason is a museum consultant
