Cupboards of Curiosities Spill Over
The New York Times, accessed in 1/11/2013.
(http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/27/science/academy-of-natural-sciences-in-philadelphia-marks-200-years.html?r=0)
In the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries, when natural history was still called philosophy and most naturalists were amateurs, collectors would create what they called cabinets of curiosities — accumulations of animal, vegetable, mineral and anthropological specimens to amaze and amuse
Often these collections grew large enough to occupy entire rooms, or even buildings. In some cases, they turned out to be precursors of modern museums.
In a way, that was the kind of project seven Philadelphia men embarked on in 1812, when they rented premises over a millinery shop, gathered a few preserved insects, some seashells and not much more, and created the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia.
Today, the academy is the oldest natural history museum in the Western Hemisphere and one of the largest in the world. Last year, it merged with another Philadelphia institution of note to form the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University. To mark its 200th anniversary, it has produced cabinets of curiosities of a different kind: a museum exhibition and book.
The exhibition, which opened last weekend, takes visitors along with academy scientists as they search for new species and study humanity’s collective impact on the environment. The book embraces a larger agenda.
To wander through “A Glorious Enterprise: The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia and the Making of American Science” is to absorb the 19th century’s passion for botany and zoology; the 20th century’s mania for exploration of distant, difficult or desolate places; and present-day preoccupations, particularly environmental issues like water quality.
Here are “gentlemen of science,” in brass-buttoned uniforms, embarking from Pittsburgh by steamboat to explore the Ohio, Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. (James Fenimore Cooper parodied the species in his book “The Prairie.”) (...)
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