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Of Science in Museums
So p h i a Vack i m es
M
useum s as we know them today are con-
sidered to be truly modern institutions.
In them notions of ethnicity, nation
building, and pro gress have been played out contin-
uously since the nineteenth century. Although
linked histo rically to Renaissance cab inets of curi-
osities, they have long since ceased being places
where wonders of nature were accumulated and
displayed for the irown sake. Ev entually, the collec-
tions of dissected butterflies, fossils and other curi-
osities were separated from the materials that
would become the cornerstone of art m useum col-
lections, i.e., port ra its of kings, placid landscapes,
architectural m arvels, and canvases portraying the
mythical acts of gods and goddesses.
Local historical museums and ethnographic
collections took new shapes a nd directions. In m any
cases they became involved in the mak ing of patr i-
otic imagery of emerging nation
states.
Those mu se-
ums that began appearing in nineteenth-century
postcolonial states emulated their European coun-
terparts in many ways, but they sought, most im-
portantly,todisplay an ethnic and national identity
distinct from the background they all once shared.
In this manner museums became political spaces
where a totaliz ing classificatory grid[which],could
be applied with endless flexibility to anything un-
der the state's real or contemplated control: peo-
ples, regions , rel ig ions , languages , products ,
mo num ents and so forth (Anderson 1991:184).
Science museum s had a different development.
The mysterious collections alchemists and physi-
cists am assed , which w ere once protected by scien-
tific,
ethno logical or gentlemen's societies, became
a t t a c h e d t o r e s e a r c h i n s t i t u t i o n s li k e t h e
Jagiellonian Unive rsity in Poland, the Ashmolean
Museum at Oxford University, or the Museo
Naciona l in Mexico. Museums of science, which in-
cluded mathematics, physics, chemistry, electric-
ity, and archaeological collections were regarded as
centers of pur e knowledge and considered devoid of
political motives. These views held for most of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Volumes have been written about the impor-
tance of museums in modern societies. However,
and ama zingly enough, even tho ugh scientific activ-
ity defines m uch of our everyda y ac tivities and the
overall thr us t of W estern cu lture, science museums
remain largely unanalyzed. Why have we anthro-
pologists and other cultu ral thi nk ers ignored them?
It is urgent to ask whether or not science exhibits
have political motives behind them, especially
when it is obvious that they are an integral part of
the public image of science. Are we being lazy or
derelict in our dutyto society? Are we afraid todeal
with the crises of rep rese ntati on, cu ltural inter-
pretation, and issues of conflicting epistemologies
that they represent (Nader 1999:20)?
I will sketch a synopsis of the relations hip t ha t
anthropology has borne to museum studies and
then I will propose the issue of science as a particu-
lar type of culture. In drawing such comparisons I
hope to illust rate how mu ch of the issue s in anthro-
pological literature are directly relevant when dis-
cussing scientific practice and its ideologically
driven museum represe ntation. As experts in deal-
ing with diverse worldviews it is critical th atwe re -
alize
how
science mu seum s contrib ute iconographic
and stylistic elements to an exhibitionary mes-
sagea message tha t reflects the social functions
of ideologiespatterns of symbolic formulations
and f igura t ive l an gu ag es of power (Geertz
1973:212-13).
Brief History of Museum C rit ique
M useum s have been critical sites of anthropo-
logical research since the m odern formation of the
discipline in the 19th cen tury (Nad er
1999:1).
They
us um
nthropology26 1):3-10. Copyright 2003 American Anthropological Association.
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MUS UM NTHROPOLOGYVOLUME26NUMBER
have consistently provided the field with fresh and
fertile ground for the developm ent of our discipline .
Since Franz Boas designed the exhibition halls at
the American M useum of Natura l History (AMNH)
in New York City, notions of culture have been con-
sidered an d played out in over a century of mu seum
exhibits. Over time, however, the intense relation-
ship between museums and anthropology waned,
and the intere st in the academic value, history, a nd
purpose of these ins titut ion s w as neglected. As our
discipline evolved, th e m ythical times when Fra nz
Boas at th e AMNH in New York, A.L. Kroeber at
the Anthropology M useum at the U niversity of Cal-
ifornia at Berkeley and others worked at museums
were forgotten. The rich h istory of the inte nse rela-
tionships between museums and anthropologists
became covered with dust and shoved into sealed
containers wa iting to be deaccessioned. The rift be-
tween museum anthropology and academic anth ro-
pology made mu seum s unlikely sites for stu dy since
they were considered step-institutions of the aca-
demic world. Museum curators who shared aca-
demic appointm ents we re seen by colleagues to be
engaged in less respe ctab le and intellectually de-
ma nding activity and tied to writing elem enta ry
textbooks with a libera l use of visual aids (Jones
1995:202).
Museums recovered their importance within
anthropological studies in the 1980's and 1990's as
the natur e of ethnographic authority, the crea tion
of trad it ion s, the exam ina tion of colonial an d
postcolonial bias in the repre senta tion of othe r cul-
tures, the ethical responsibilities of anthropolo-
gists, and the epistemological status of analytical
categories were challenged in a post Civil Rights,
postcolonial era. Benedict Anderson's analysis of
the c reation of postcolonial s tate s in
Imagined Com-
munities
(f irs t pub l ished in 1983) eve ntu al ly
showed us how muse um s could be sites for the cre-
ation of distinct po litical im aginations. N ewly cre-
ated nation states utilized m useums as showcases
for the development of political unity directed at an
upper middle class that internalized and reified
specific visions of patriotic cohesion and political
power. A whole generation of museum critics has
been influenced by An derson 's work, which shows
how, together with the novel, the newspaper, the
census and the map, muse um s served as historical
maps or nation building blueprints that wove an-
cient prestige to the future ideals of emerging
postcolonial ruling classes. Museums becam e pa rt
of the formal ideological program me of mod ern
so-
cial constructions (Anderson 1991:181).
Flora K aplan's edited volume
Museums and the
Making ofOurselves (1994) attempted an expan-
sion on Anderson's idea, providing numerous case
studiestoillustratehowm useum s, as political arti-
facts, had indeed legitimized power in nations as
apparently dissimilar as Mexico and Greece. How-
ever, th is volume did not accom plish all it set o ut to
do .
Since then, views about their purpose have
greatly differed. For less optimistic authors they
are spaces where ideological legitimation or cul-
tu ra l encroachment und er the guise of civilizing
missions took place. Allison Arieff described muse-
um s as sites for the production and appro priationof
indigenous history built on culturally biased no-
tions of objectivity, progress, and universality
(Arieff 1995:78). Other critics, such as Tony
Be nnett (1988), have portrayed mu seumsasspaces
where the s tate submits th e citizen to a hegemonic
gaze through a Foucauldian exhibitionary com-
plex akin to the asylum, the clinic, and the prison;
spaces where discursive formations and new tech-
nologies of the state are continuously envisioned
and enacted.
Once exhibits were revea led as ca rrying specific
cultural and political messages criticism flour-
ished. Academic and political notions were chal-
lenged in written form as well as in the realm of
performance art and the way artifacts w ere being
represe nted. One of the first issues tobevigorously
debated was what was perceived as institutional-
ized, exhibitionary racism. The exhibitPrimitivism
in 20th Cen tury Art: Affinities of the Tribal andthe
Modern,
he ld a t the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
in New York in1984elicited a flurry of negative
re-
sponses to th e term primitive. The legacy of the
sixties, and budding political awareness as well as
correctness, characterized the term and the mu-
seum 's politics as an example of museological ma-
nipu lation (McEvilley 1984:59). The exhibit was
accused of being a space whe re non-W estern art and
people were treated as less tha n huma n, less than
culturalas shadows of a culture, their selfhood,
the ir O therness , wrun g out of them (McEvilley
1984:59).
This position was taken up by numerous au-
tho rs as well as by ar tist s who challenged Western
exhibitionary notions. Various a rtist s contributed
to challenging museum a nd c uratorial cultural au-
thority. Fred Wilson's work directly spoke to an
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apartheid state of affairs in the art world with
pieces titled Stolen from the Zonge Tribe, 1899,
Priv ate Collection, in insta llation s such as
Mining
the
Museum,
andRooms
with a V iew.
In both cases
white/black, m useum /public notions of power were
subverted. In Rooms With a View,the public could
stare back at mannequins, which donned MoMA's
and the M etropolitan Museum of Art's famous uni-
forms. The tren d continued with the work of perfor-
m a n c e a r t i s t s C oc o F u s c o a n d G u i l l e r m o
Gomez-Pena, who, by placing themselves inside a
cage at the Am erican M useum of Natural History,
s i g n a l ed d i s g u s t w i t h t h e ap p ro p r i a t i o n o f
non-Western objects into Western capitalist sys-
tems of values and the violen t dism issal of the
voices of those they claimed to celebrate (Clifford
1997:200).
Aesthetic considerations also led to conce ptual
revisions of the n atu re of m ate ria l culture. The par-
adigm that defines an object as art or artifact was
thoroughly deconstructed. Susan Vogel's exhibits
at the Center for African Art ra ttle d the e ntren che d
notions of primitivism with exhibits that centered
African m ateria ls in the tren dy SoHo conceptualart
circuit. These subversions reverberated through-
out the museum community. Eurocentrically moti-
va ted concep t s tha t had con t r ibu ted to and
continuously played out the notion tha t African art
represented the lower rung of an evolutionary
course of art h istory were questioned. Insta llation s
such as Pers pective s: An gles on African A rt,
which was one of the first to presen t non-W estern
ar t from a ran ge of viewpoints, including th a t of Af-
rican art ists started to change the t ide (Jones
1993:206). The ART/Artifact exhibit curated by
Vogel displaced notions of mode rnity and prim itiv-
ism, displaying African objects in non-traditional
manners.
A
shift in think ing wa s triggered by wh at
is known in ar t circles as Vogel's Net a fisher-
man's artifact exhibited as a bundle rathe r th an as
an ethnogra phic artifact in the style of the C entr al
Park institution from w here it w as borrowed. The
SoHo locale continued to host challenges to the
Western cultural coding norm of museums. Ex-
hibits such as
Contemporary Art
Gallery,
C uriosity
Room;Natural History Museum Diorama;
and a
videotape of an African ceremony lay bare the
primitivising, exhibitionary conventions used in
art as wel l as anthropology museums (Jones
1993:206). The ma in m erit of the se exhibits wa s the
beg inning of th e erosion of th e c lassic opposition be-
tween art and anthropology (Jones 1993:207). But
others disagree. James Clifford, for example, ar-
gues there was no real change, and that these exer-
c i ses were mere ly aes the t i c i zed sc ien t i sm
(1988:203).
The political ev ents of the 1980's also allowed
for the emp owering of Native groups rega rding th e
display of their cultu res. The b ulk of anthropologi-
cal litera ture on museum s lies here and centers on
the rep res enta tion of the other and local politics.
Native voices appear in abundance and take center
stage in crafting indigenous, self-representations.
Exemplifying this move is the study of Canadian
Native voices done by Jam es Clifford in
Routes:
Traveland Translation in the Late Twentieth Cen-
tury(1997). In his chapter Four Northwest Coast
Museums: Travel Reflections, he describes differ-
ent museum sites as tactical approaches in the
creation of new interpretive categories (or transla-
tion devices) of art, culture, politics and history
(Clifford [1991] 1997:212).
A second powerful example of this movement
was the emergence of African American
voices
and
politics. African Am ericans appe ared in full force at
the National Museum of American History in the
exhibit From Farm to Factory. The exhibit was
curated by the then di rector of the museum,
Spencer Crew, an African American historian who
not only directed the exhaustive collection of slave
era a rtifacts (previously a bsent from the Sm ithso-
nian's collections), but who also created powerful
devices through which viewers could interact with
history.
W hites Only and Coloreds
Only
signs on
doorways a t critical junc tures in the show dr am ati-
cally dem arca ted the plight of people of color in the
United S tate s. The presence of Ku Klux Klan gar-
men ts, including a baby's cap and carriage, was a n
acrid testimo ny of the legacy of terro r in Am erica.
How m useum s engage with and respondtocom-
munities with vested interests was brought to the
forefront with the passage of the Native American
Graves Protection and Repatria tion Act (NAGPRA)
in 1990. NAGPRA requires museum s and federal
agencies to work with Native groups to determ ine
the disposition of human remains and sacred and
cultural objects taken from federal landsorlocated
in museum collections . . . [It] perma nently altered
the relationship between museums and Native
Am ericans (Lomawalma 2000:41). Today tribal mu -
seums, community centers, and other multicultura l
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6 MUS EUM NTHROPOLOGY VOLUME 26 NUMBER 1
spaces continuously challenge the status quo with
exh ibits at national and local venues.
The relationship between people and objects
and the vivid contrast of meanings that are con-
fer red upon them by different cultural groups have
been highlighted by a literature that explores is-
su es of contex tualization, commodification,
d ec o n t e x t u a l i z a t i o n , an d t h e s t ru g g l e s t o
re si tu at e the various mean ings of objects. The vol-
u me , The Social Life of Things (1986) edited by
Arju n App adurai, gave new significance to the no-
tion of an object's life and the trajectory of th at life.
Th e context and the social arena s in which folk
ob-
jects and human remains operate take new mean-
ings en route to museum exhibits. Comm odities, as
m us eu m objects often are , represe nt very complex
socia l forms an d distr ibution s of know ledge... tech-
nic al, social, aesthe tic and so forth . . . T he produc-
tion of knowledge th atisread into the commodity is
quite different from the consumption of knowledge
th at is read
from
he comm odity (App adurai [1986]
2000:41).
Museological critique owes a trem endous debt
to primatology and its intersection with feminist
studies. During the 1980's a generation of women
scientists interested in primate research directly
cha lleng ed th e male-centric scientific notions in the
discipline. Jane Goodall , Dian Fossey, Jeanne
A ltm an n, Alison Richard and Thelma Rowell devel-
oped im po rtan t epistemological critiques of biologi-
cal functionalism. Fem inist-centered theo ry did not
merely intend to correct male-centered models of
primate behavior but directly challenged the en-
tre nc he d notions of biological essen tialism.
Interse cting with museum studies and illustra-
tive of these new theoretical formulations is Donna
H ara w ay 's essay Teddy Bear Patria rchy : Taxi-
de rm y in the G arden of Ed en, New York City,
1908-1 936, first published in 1984. This piece was
in st ru m en ta l in offering a specific viewpoint of'sci-
enc e' as a window on the world of na ture (Schudson
1997:383). Hara way was innovative in the way she
tre at ed a museum exhibit as the readable text
(Schu dson 1997:383) of a ma le-centered purs uit of
po w er . The p iece i s v iewe d today as a b i t
long-winded , pronouncing central mo ral tru ths
ab ou t the moral state (Schudson 1997:385) of
white male elites belonging to the American Mu-
seum of Natural History's board of trustees and
benefactors . I t nevertheless remains essent ial
re ad in g not only for its feminist critique but also as
an important contribution to museum studies. It
squarely pointedtothe fact that m use um s. . . have
ideologies (Gran a quoted in Schud son 1997:385).
The idea that traditions institutionalize power and
privi lege was made abundant ly clear through
Hara way 's dem onstration of how class, race and
gender were determining elements in the creation
of the d ioramas of the Hall of African M am mals.
Museum stud ies also
owe
a serious debt to those
writers who viewed th e co nstruction of thebodyas a
social entity. N ancy Schep er-Hug hes and M arga ret
M. Lock's essay The Mindful Body: A Prolegome-
non to Future Work in Medical Anthropology
(1987), contests Western assumptions of medical
theory and show tha t th e body can be
viewed:
(1) as
a phenomenally experienced individual
body-self;
(2) as a social body, a natural symbol for thinking
about relationships am ong nat ur e, society and cul-
ture; and (3) as a body politic, an artifact of social
and political control (Scheper-Hughes and Lock
1987:6). Anchored inaparticular place and time the
body is culturally produced. This argument led to
various studies of repr ese ntatio ns of th e body in th e
art s and in exhibitionary cultu re. Some particu-
larly relevant works dealing with wom en'sbodiesin
science are Londa Schiebinger's
Nature s Body:
Genderin the Making of Mod ern Science,
(1995) a
genealogy of taxonomical classification and use of
sexual metaphors during the scientific revolution;
Ancestral Images: The Iconography of Human Ori-
gins, (1998) by Stepha nie Moser, looks at the cul-
tural biases in artistic renderings of evolutionary
theory;
The Quick and theDead: Artists andAnat
omy,
(1998) by Dea nna Pethe rbridge and Ludm illa
Jordanova and
Body Criticism: Imaging
the Unseen
in Enlightenment Art and Medicine,
(1993) by
B a r b a r a M a r i a S t a f f o r d , i l l u s t r a t e t h e
nonlinguistic para digm s tha t science has used in
a radical shi f t f rom a text based to a v isu-
ally-centered culture . Cathe rine Cole took the dis-
cussion straight to museum exhibit practices in
Women,
Reproduction
and
etuses
at C hicago s Mu-
seum of
Science
and Industry
(1993).
The Role of the Science Museum
Soif the role museums have ta ken lately is t ha t
of culture as a self-reflective space, w ha t do they tel l
us ab out ourselves? About politics? About science?
About science in mu seums? In Am erican Anthro -
pologists and American Society (1969), Eric Wolf
noted that contemporary American society lacked
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urgent self-criticism. Laura Nader continues to see
this lack and describes the present moment in
museography as one where ther e is a need for ur-
gent political and epistemological que stioning
(1999:5). Although there have been great advances
in cu l tu ra l and an th ro po lo g ica l c r i t iqu e of
ethnographic and a rt mu seum s, and of certa in sci-
ences like medicine, some subjects have remained
out-of-bounds for the epistemological questioning
that Nader proposes. While it is true that many
museographic issues or political positions have
been engaged in creating alte rna te discourses, and
pol i t ical groups have empowered themselves
enough to share representational modes in major
museum venues science has rema ined an inexora-
ble Rubicon.
Already in the 1970's and 1980's, as a re su lt of
the Cold War, intellectuals had attem pted a critical
view ofAm erican scientific ideology. The
field
of cul-
tural studiesisnot new, and an thropologists, Marx-
ists,feminists, constructivists, de constructionists,
have approached science as a pa rticula r c ulture for
a long time now. So why ha sn't ther e been a political
critique of science m useum s?
Science museums need to be looked at as sites
where the dynamics of bounda ry creation, power
and knowledge are played out (Nader 1996:12).
Perhapsoneof the reason s this h as not been done is
that we had not yet achieved the de tachm ent, the
experience, and the critical maturity necessary to
undertake (Nad er 1999:8) such a project. We first
needed to . . . problematize the idea of the 'Oth er' in
order to recognize our roles as n ativ es in our own
so-
ciety (Nader 1999:8).
In the Uni ted States science is general ly
equated with progress. Prese nting a divergent view
proved nearly fatal for Science in American Life,
an exhibit which opened at the Nationa l M useumof
American History at the Sm ithsonian I nstitu tion in
1994 and discussed by Arth ur Molella in th is iss ue.
The cura torial staff focused on scientific im pac t
instead, and urged the public to think about the
meaning of the contraceptive pill, the atomic bomb,
food additives, scientific education, coal tar prod-
ucts,
synthetic fabrics, pain ts, aspirin, and the ef-
fect of pesticides. Obscure inventors, vaccines and
DNA, medical innovations, dyes for blue jean s, r a-
dio circuits, and h ard water in A merican comm uni-
ties were all present in the exhibit. This might all
seem quite obvious material to portray since the
show was about American life. However the show
el ic i t ed t he i re of sc ien t i f i c an d po l i t i ca l
com mun ities such as the A merican Chemical Soci-
ety, Veterans of Foreign Wars, and the American
Asso ciation for the Advancem ent of Science.Afall-
out shelter and a set of photographs of victims of the
nuclear explosions of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
brou ght t hr ea ts of staff firings and a C ongressional
investigation of the curatorial staff. The worry
among some scientists on the museum's advisory
board w as th at the shelter would sta nd out as a sym-
bol of scientific evil, an arg um en t th at echoed the
Science Wars of the mid-nineties (Molella and
Step hen s 1995:9). It is lam entable th at only threeor
four m onographs have been w ritte n about this ex-
hibit, and that it will be torn down in a couple of
ye ars because of surreptitious building remodel-
ing.
The assumption of the inherent superiority of
modern science has remained an article of faith
w ithi n our cu lture (Nader 1999:8). Anthropology as
a discipline h as m atured and is now capable of tack-
ling within m useums wha t various anthropologists
hav e been tack ling in other are na s for years. Sadly
enough, science in museums has not been tapped.
Two auth ors , however, have dealt w ith science and
its exhibitionary sphere. Hugh Gusterson has ex-
am ined yearly exhibits and com mem orations of nu-
clear tests a t LosAlamosin his articles Talesof the
City (1998), which deals with exhibiting the nu-
clear attack at Hiroshima, and Nuclear Tourism
(2001); Dorothy Nelkin approached DNA as a cul-
tu ra l icon (1995). Nelkin's treatm en t of the mate-
rial is different from most work on the body for it
focuses strong ly on science as ideology and bound-
aries of power rather than on artistic renderings.
The utility of boundary-work is not limited to
demarcations of science from non-science (Gieryn
1983:792), nor is it limited to gende r stu dies, icono-
graphic analysis, or the study of ethnic communi-
ties.O ur complex societies need a closer look at th e
stra ins and interests tha t guide the selection of
one or another repertoire for public presentation
(Gieryn 1983:792). Herein lies the importance of
studying science museums.
Museums help mold much of what the general
public understands as and about science. They act
in manners akintolaboratories w here information
is processed and reconfigured into useful cultural
artifacts. In laboratories some facts are reified as
scientific knowledge, while others are discarded.
Science museum s help transform a public quest for
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8 MUSEUM NTHROPOLOGY VOLUM E 26 NUMBER 1
informa tion into acceptable w ays of knowing, of
be-
having, of und ersta ndin g natu re. Museums are so-
cial labo rator ies where enhanced environments
set up correspondences between n atural orders and
social ones (Knorr-Cetina 1999:26). In laboratories
facts are processed, detached from their natu ral
env iron m ent, moved onto a symbol based technol-
ogy an d conve rted into scales of social order ju st
as they are in m useum s (Knorr-Cetina 1999:28).
If science indeed is capab le of engaging (Fran k-
lin 1995:177) and thus altering public discourse ,
and if the an aly sis of sites of the creation of ideology
is one of the ideals of anthropology, then it is time
tha t science museum s as publicspacesare taken up
as new sites for research.
Of Sc ience in Museums
The American triumphalism that Eric Wolf
critiqued h as be en ma de quite appa rent in our lack
of que stion ing c ur rent political and scientific en ter-
prise . It tak es going abroad to see tha t exhibits on
science th at inclu de social critique are possible. The
new W ellcome Wing of th e Science Museum in
Lon-
don, is a point in case. Genetic engineering is se-
verely que stioned again st a backdrop of invited art
works that sort out questions of social impact and
ethics. Here and Now: Contemporary Scienceand
Technologyin Museums andScienceC enters,edited
by Farnelo and Carding and published by the Sci-
ence Mu seum in London (1996), deals with and re-
flects on the past achievements of scientists and
technologists by imp roving th e coverage of the work
they a re doing today. The auth ors are not shy in
dis-
cussing iss ues such as how visitors would react to
controve rsial biotechnology exhibits. For example:
How would the public, so bent on the promise of
spare body pa rt s gen erated by genetic research, re-
act to actually viewing a hum an ear growing on the
back of a labo rator y m ouse? or an interactive game
called The Sp erm ina tor, in which schoolchildren
useapinball m achine to learn about pregnancy and
infertility?
British Museum's director Robert Anderson
(previously a t th e Science Museum) has repeatedly
expressed how perplexed he is about the lack of
analysis of the material culture of science in this
country. Useful points of departure are the papers
in
The History of Technology at the Science Museum,
London (1996) also published by the Science Mu-
seum in London a nd edited by Insley and Bud. The
pap ers de al with r esear ch and collecting agendas of
science museums as well as the nature of science
exhibits.Somearticles a lso reflectonthe collabora-
tion that goes on among American, British, and
German science museum s. Sharon M acdonald ha s
also broken new ground with an ethnog raphic ac-
count of the goings on in th e creation of science ex-
hibits with her volume
Behind the Scenes at the
Science Museum (2002); however, she does not
study up.
Science museums in the United S tate s hav e re-
mained attached to merely presen ting ma terials as
wonders of nature or as technological feats. We
must ask ourselves what is left out and what is it
telling us about ideological bound aries. Millions a re
spent throughout the United S tates in the develop-
ment of science centers, yet we continue to disre-
gard such enterprises as out of the realm of
anthropology. The city of Tucson, Arizona, for in-
stance, is gearing up for a ten-year project, which
will be a complex tha t not only revitalize s it s down-
town area butalsoincludes art, culture and science
as part of its mandate. However, will the science
center include an anthropology section? Will it dis-
cuss solar energy as a source of power? Or w ill it ad-
dress genetically modified organisms? What about
an exhibit on telesurveillance? These notions are
not so farfetched considering that seventy percent
of our foods are genetically modified, or that popu-
lar culture ha s so effectively shown us Big Broth er's
entertainment value.
The American Anthropological Association's
Council for Museum Anthropology hosted a session
on science mu seum s at its
2001
ann ual meeting in
Washington, D.C. This session, titled Science and
Cu ltural Boundaries, wasfiveyears in the making.
Tom Gieryn, Indian a Unive rsity, spoke to the chal-
lenges of telling the trut h at m useum s. The bound-
aries blurred by the enigmatic Museum for J ura ssic
Technology are extrao rdinary exam ples of such dif-
ficulty. Art Molella, of the N ationa l Museum of
American History, Smithsonian Institution, re-
flectedonhis curatorial work in Science in Am eri-
canLife. He discussed wh at w riting th e sc ript for a
responsible national science exhibit m eans a nd how
th at effort became a long and winding nigh tm are .
Hugh Gusterson,whoin the m idst of becoming a fa-
ther, contributed a marvelously sh arp and w itty yet
macabre paper on Nuclear Tourism. Tracey Dye,
who helped organize the panel, dramatically up-
dated the discussion Haraway began alm ost tw enty
yearsagoon dioramas at th e American M useum of
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Natural His tory . My own essay took Dorothy
Nelkin's ta ck on DNA as cultural icon andviewsThe
Genomic Revolution at the American Museum of
N atu ra l H istor y as an exhibit overwhelmed by ref-
erences to obscurantism. Enid Schildkrout served
as our discus san t. Her critique was fundam ental to
our overall o rganization and intellectual direction.
The papers presented at the session that appear in
this issue ar e by Molella, Vackimes, and
Dye.
In ad-
dit ion to those, we have added Akiko Kanaya
Mikochi's p iece, which is an exam ple of fresh writ-
ing in a sea of obtuse academic referencing.
The t h ru st of this volume is to strategically
po-
sition science mu seum s within the study of power,
hegemony , and a particular aspect of We stern ide-
ology. Sc ience is not devoid of motives. Science,
which is not as a ttachedto truth as we might have
once tho ug ht it was, ha s lost its effectiveness as
monitor of reality. It is
now drifting towards its decline, its civic fall
from grace. . . . As a panic phenomenon-a fat
concealed by the success of its devices and
toolscontemporary science is losing itself in
the very excessiveness of its alleged progress.
Much as a stra tegy, offensive can wear itself out
by th e scale of its tactic al con que sts, so
techno-science is gradually wrecking th e schol-
arly resources of all knowledge (Virilo 2000:2).
Science mu seum s are ripe for serious scrutiny.
Are wew illingtotackle themor not?Or shallwelet
them con tinu e a slippage into the future of propa-
ganda ? (Bro dsky quoted in Virilio (2002:15), tha t
propagation of faithand progress [which] is
merely a mystical displacementthe frantic
dep loym ent of a force of physical repulsion and
expulsion of man out of that divine Creation
which ha d u p until then been for him, the world
over, the beginning of all reality[?] (Virilio
2002:15).
c k n o w le d g m e n t s
To Dr. A lan D undes for everlasting inspiration
and a notion that there are underlying motives in
every hum an undertaking, and to Dr. Laura Nader
who pointed th e way. To the founding ideals of the
Gradu ate Fa culty. Many thankstoChristina K reps
for her editorial assistance.
R e f e re n c e s C i te d
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S o p h i a V a c k i m e s is currentlya doctor l s tu d e n tin
n t h r o p o l o g y
at the
Gr a d u a te F a c u lty
of the New
S c h o o l
in New
Y o r kCity
She
h o l d s
a M A in
Latin
m e r i c a n S t ud i e s w i tha c o n c e n t r a t i o ninM u s e u m
S tu d ie s f r o m New Y o r k U niv e r s i ty