La alfabetización científica y la formación ciudadana

In the early 1800s, the new scientific discipline of natural history played a significant role in helping European colonisers make sense of the unfamiliar flora and fauna of the distant colonies. A network o f scientific infrastructure quickly developed throughout the

Australasian colonies, emerging as a mix of philosophical societies and institutes, museums of natural history, geological surveys and small private collections. This proliferation was fuelled by scientific rivalry as each colony set out to entice scientists from Britain to

establish scientific institutions.1 Early collections featured mineral resources and fossils that aimed to showcase the economic potential of the colonies and to attract government funding, given that ‘financial support for colonial science was usually contingent upon

1 Carolyn Rasmussen, A M u se u m f o r the People: A H isto ry o f M u se u m V icto ria a n d Its Predecessors 1 8 5 4 -2 0 0 0 (Melbourne: Scribe Publications in association with Museum Victoria, 2001). p. 16.

practical success in its application.’2 3 The Geological Survey of Great Britain, which

commenced the systematic mapping of England, Wales, Ireland and Scodand in 1835, was an influential model for colonial science.’ The Survey, which also featured a public

museum, provided the training ground for many scientists bound for Australia and New Zealand including Frederick McCoy who became the foundational director o f the National Museum of Victoria, and Alfred Selwyn who established the Geological Survey of

Victoria.4 5 6

Drawing inspiration from the British model, Wellington’s Colonial Museum was established in 1865 in conjunction with the Geological Survey o f New Zealand and a colonial laboratory. The museum enjoyed early financial support, aided by a government keen to consolidate Wellington’s position as New Zealand’s capital through the

development of major public institutions. The Colonial Museum was housed in a half- completed timber building behind the grounds of Parliament Building.’ The foundational director, Dr James Hector, shared McCoy’s geological interest, and came to the museum after serving as the Director of the Otago Geological Survey. Trained as a medical doctor in Edinburgh, Hector was part of a wave of well-educated Scottish migration to New Zealand influential in establishing the scientific foundations o f the colony/’ Many

considered Hector the only competent scientist and doctor employed by the government, and he remained in charge of the Colonial Museum until his retirement in 1903.7

The origin of the National Museum of Victoria lies in the major economic, scientific and social developments in Melbourne during the 1850s, inspired by Victoria’s colonial

independence from NSW and funded by new wealth provided by the gold rush. Melbourne emerged as the commercial centre of Australasia, prompting government to provide funds for the establishment of public institutions reflective of the city’s new prominence. The

2 Susan Sheets-Pyenson, Cathedrals of Science: The Development of Colonial Natural History Museums During the Hate Nineteenth Century (Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1988). p. 30.

3 Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, "Australian Museums of Natural History: Public Priorities and Scientific Initiatives in the 19th Century," Historical Records of Australian Science 5, no. 4 (1983). p. 4.

4 Ibid, pp.4-5.

5 Terence Hodgson, Colonial Capital: Wellington 1865-1910 (Auckland: Random Century Group, 1990). p.30.

6 Hector was appointed geologist and surgeon for expeditions into Western Canada under John Palhser before exploring the goldfields of British Columbia and California and mining in Mexico. Hector was recommended by Sir Roderick Murchison, Director of the Geological Survey of Great Britain for the position of Director of Otago Geological Survey.

7 Richard Dell, The First Hundred Years of the Dominion Museum (Wellington: Dominion Museum, 1965). p. 50.

colony was keen to match scientific developments already evident in NSW and Tasmania.* In 1853 lawyer Mark Nicholson requested that the Victorian Legislative Council fund a Museum of Natural History to increase public knowledge ‘by collecting together facts and illustrations connected with the natural history of this co lo n y .F u n d s were provided for a Museum of Natural History and Economic Geology, part of the Assay Office in the Crown Lands Building. Further cultural institutions followed including Melbourne University, established in 1853.

The University contributed to Melbourne’s increasing number of public intellectuals, most significantly through the appointment of four foundation Professors, one o f whom was Frederick McCoy as Professor o f Natural History.1" To McCoy, a museum was essential for the University. Following the withdrawal of funding from the Assay museum, McCoy offered to look after the natural history collection, in a museum that would serve both students and the general public. 1 Recognised as the senior natural scientist in the Colony o f Victoria, McCoy was appointed official director of the Museum in 1858, a position he held for forty-two years concurrently with his professorship at Melbourne University.12

Taxonomic classification guided the display of nature in McCoy’s and Hector’s museums. It was not until these long-serving foundational directors left the museum in the late- nineteenth century that either institution embraced the new scientific paradigm of

evolution. The transition from taxonomic classification to the evolutionär)7 series forms the first stage of this genealogical analysis. This period in the history of the Australasian

museum has attracted extensive academic interest which this study draws on. Through the analysis o f published institutional accounts and histories,n photographs, plans, exhibition descriptions and catalogues, together with the observations o f Bennett, Finney, Griffiths,

8 By 1821 Sydney had established a Philosophical Society, followed six years later by a museum. An active natural history society was evident in Tasmania during the 1840s including the publication of Australia’s first scientific journal, as well as a commitment to a colonial museum.

9 Mark Nicholson cited David Goodman, "Fear of Circuses: Founding the National Museum of Victoria," in Representing the Nation: A Reader Histories, Heritage and Museums, ed. David Boswell and Jessica Evans (London: Routledge, 1999). p. 260.

10 McCoy had a passion for palaeontology and geology, although having no formal qualifications. Prior to relocating to Melbourne he worked with the Geological Survey of Great Britain, was employed at the Geological Museum of the University of Cambridge and was appointed Professor of Mineralogy and Geology at Queens’ College Belfast. n For discussion on the events leading to the re-location of Victoria’s natural history collection from the Assay Office to

the University of Melbourne in 1856 see Ian Wilkinson, "The Battle for the Museum: Frederick Mccoy and the Establishment of the National Museum of Victoria at the University of Melbourne," Historical Records of Australian Science 11, no. 1 (1996).

12 Ibid. p. 9.

13 Dell, The First Hundred Years of the Dominion Museum. R.T.M Pescott, Collections of a Century: The History of the First Hundred Years of the National Museum of Victoria (Melbourne: National Museum of Victoria, 1954). Rasmussen, A Museum for the People: A History of Museum Victoria and Its Predecessors 1854-2000.

Kohlstedt and Sheets-Pyenson,14 I establish the major characteristics of and motivations for display practices o f nature in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century in both the Colonial Museum and the National Museum of Victoria. This examination is further developed through the consideration o f parallel display practices of the natural world, evident at the International Exhibitions.

Universal scientific principles o f visual taxonomy and evolutionary science were adopted contemporaneously within the Colonial Museum (renamed the Dominion Museum in 1907) and the National Museum of Victoria. During this transitional period, emphasis shifted from presenting a static visual taxonomy of the entire collection to evoking a sense of the temporal by ordering selected objects into sequences of descent, with specimens curated according to their ability to best demonstrate evolution. Text, no longer used for the descriptive labelling of the taxonomic collection, was used instead to narrate the space

between objects, to guide the visitor to see evidence of change.

A notable difference between the museums is the contrasting perspectives of indigenous people. Displays of Aboriginal people remained dislocated from European colonisers, separated by an ‘unbridgeable’ temporal gap, while in the Dominion Museum Maori culture was presented as a prelude to New Zealand history as well as being featured in ‘scientific’ ethnographical displays. The rapid extinction of flora and fauna emerges as a major preoccupation in the New Zealand museum. Displays developed for the International exhibitions, although shaped by an alternative display philosophy that merged spectacle with education, also mirrored these framings of the indigenous.