A Museum at War: Snapshots of the Natural History Museum During World War One
- ISBN-10
- 0565094610
- ISBN-13
- 9780565094614
- Category
- History
- Pages
- 232
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2018-10
- Publisher
- Natural History Museum, London
- Author
- Karolyn Shindler
Description
For the Natural History Museum - as with so many other organisations - the Great War brought unimagined change. Sixty-one members of staff serve in the military. Thirteen of them die. Routine work is suspended as, over the four years of the war, 14 government departments - from the Admiralty and the War Office to the Home Office and the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries - turn to the Museum for its scientific expertise and innovation. Its scientists are consulted on a huge range of issues from airship construction, how protective coloration in nature can be applied to war - we know it now as camouflage - to the roles of whales and seagulls in anti-bmarine warfare, and how to protect soldiers from the potentially deadly dangers of mosquitoes, flies and lice. The scientists' work is recorded month by month in their reports to the Museum Trustees. Through this remarkable archive, a diary of extraordinary endeavour and perseverance, Karolyn Shindler reveals how, for four years, the Natural History Museum played an unexpected and significant role in Britain's war effort.
Get the book
Similar books
-
Does War Belong in Museums?: The Representation of Violence in Exhibitions
By Wolfgang MuchitschThe museums concerned also have to face up to these basic issues about the social and institutional handling of war and violence. Does war really belong in museums? And if it does, what objectives and means are involved?
-
Museums, Modernity and Conflict: Museums and Collections in and of War since the Nineteenth Century
By Kate HillWritten by a mixture of museum professionals and academics and ranging across Europe, North America and the Middle East, this book examines the many ways in which museums were affected by major conflicts such as the World Wars, considers ...
-
Curating the Great War
By Nicholas J. Saunders, Paul CornishOn the debit-side, however, the great expansion of tourist activity arising from the centenary has put increased pressure on the often fragile legacies of the war. Today, the full package of the Isonzo Front heritage includes all kinds ...
-
The Second World War in the Twenty-First-Century Museum: From Narrative, Memory, and Experience to Experientiality
By Stephan JaegerThe Second World War is omnipresent in contemporary global memory debates. This is the first study to systematically analyze on a global scale how museums allow today's visitors to comprehend and experience the history of the war.
-
Museums and the First World War: A Social History
By Gaynor KavanaghThe book is concerned with how, during four demanding, dislocating and world-changing years, that most Victorian of institutions, the museum, was forced or prompted to meet the extraordinary test of war on the home front.
-
The Second World War in the Twenty-First-Century Museum: From Narrative, Memory, and Experience to Experientiality
By Stephan JaegerThe Second World War is omnipresent in contemporary memory debates.
-
The Trojan War Museum: and Other Stories
By Ayse Papatya BucakThe stories are music.” —Marcela Davison Avilés, NPR In Ayse Papatya Bucak’s dreamlike narratives, dead girls recount gas explosions and a chess-playing automaton falls in love.
-
The war that never ends: The Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk
By Paweł MachcewiczIn his book he presents this story as a part of cultural wars that tear apart not only Poland but also many countries in Europe and on other continents.
-
War Monuments, Museums and Library Collections of 20th Century Conflicts: A Directory of United States Sites
By Steve Rajtar, Frances Elizabeth Franks53 Air Victory Museum South Jersey Regional Airport, Medford, NJ; 68 Stacy Haines Rd., Medford, NJ 08055; (609) 267-4488, fax (609) 702-¡852; http://www.airvictorymuseum.org; ...
-
Interpreting the Civil War at Museums and Historic Sites
By Kevin M. LevinIn doing so, this book offers museums and history professionals strategies to help shape conversations with local communities, develop exhibits and train interpreters.