Withers, Charles

Henry, John

Swinney, Geoffrey Nigel

2013-11-08T16:08:12Z

2013-11-08T16:08:12Z

2013-07-01

This thesis adopts a primarily process-based methodology to put a museum in its place as a site of knowledge-making. It examines the practices of space which were productive of a government-funded (‘national’) museum in Edinburgh. Taking a spatial perspective, and recognising that place is both material and metaphorical, the thesis explores how the Museum’s material and intellectual architectures were produced over the period 1854-1939. The thesis is concerned to bring into focus the dynamic processes by which the Museum was in a continual state of becoming; a constellation of tangible and intangible objects constantly being produced and reproduced through mobility of objects, people and ideas. Its concern is to chart the flows through space which produced the Museum. The thesis comprises nine chapters. An introduction and a literature review are followed by chapters concerned, respectively, with the built space of the museum and with the people who worked there. A further three chapters consider the nature of that work and the practices of space which constituted the processes of collecting, displaying, and educating, whilst another focuses on visiting. The final chapter discusses how the analysis has constructed the museum as constituted through a complex diversity of material and metaphorical settings on a variety of geographical scales. This critical scrutiny of the museum has, in turn, brought to the fore the place of the Museum in contributing to civic and national identity. Through a case-study of a particular museum, the concern has been to explore how critical geographies of science may be applied to the examination of a museum. In particular the thesis examines how contextual concepts developed largely in conscribed sites such as laboratories apply to a public site such as a museum. The thesis suggests that the ordering terms ‘space’ and ‘place’, combined with a focus on practice and performance, may have more general application in constructing an historical geography of museums as sites of production and consumption of scientific knowledge.

http://hdl.handle.net/1842/8109

en

The University of Edinburgh

Herman, J. S., McGowan, R. Y., & Swinney, G. N. (1990). Catalogue of Type Specimens of Recent Vertebrates in the National Museums of Scotland. National Museums of Scotland Information Series (Vol. 4). Edinburgh: National Museums of Scotland.

Swinney, G. N. (1982). Some Richardson type specimens in a collection of Australian fishes, with notes of their collector Robert Neill. Archives of Natural History, 2, 17-25.

Swinney, G. N. (1990). Actinopterygii. In J. S. Herman, R. Y. McGowan & G. N. Swinney (Eds.), Catalogue of Type Specimens of Recent Vertebrates in the National Museums of Scotland. National Museums of Scotland Information Series 4 (pp. 1-4). Edinburgh: National Museums of Scotland.

Swinney, G. N. (1999). A natural history collection in transition. Wyville Thomson and the relationship between the University of Edinburgh and the Edinburgh Museum of Science and Art. Journal of the History of Collections, 11, 51-70.

Swinney, G. N. (1999). Wyville Thomson, Challenger, and the Edinburgh Museum of Science and Art. Scottish Naturalist, 111, 207-224.

Swinney, G. N. (1999). Gas lighting in British museums and galleries, with particular reference to the Edinburgh Museum of Science and Art. Museum Management and Curatorship, 18, 113-143.

Swinney, G. N. (1999). Who runs the Museum? Curatorial conflict in a national collection. Museum Management and Curatorship, 17, 295-301.

Swinney, G. N. (2002). Reporting on the museum: the annual reports of the Edinburgh Museum of Science and Art. Archives of Natural History, 29, 99-108.

Swinney, G. N. (2003). Furnishing a museum: nineteenth century exhibition casing in the Royal Museum, Edinburgh. Furniture History, 39, 121-139.

Swinney, G. N. (2003). The evil of vitiating and heating the air: artificial lighting and public access to the National Gallery, London, with particular reference to the Turner and Vernon collections. Journal of the History of Collections, 15, 83-112.

Swinney, G. N. (2004). ‘I am utterly disgusted…’ - evening opening of the Edinburgh Museum of Science and Art effecting moral decline? Review of Scottish Culture, 16, 76-84.

Swinney, G. N. (2004). Partying in the museum. History Scotland, 4(5), 40-45.

Swinney, G. N. (2006). Reconstructed visions: the philosophies that shaped part of the Scottish national collections. Museum Management and Curatorship, 21, 128-142.

Swinney, G. N. (2008). Enchanted invertebrates: Blaschka models and other simulacra in National Museums Scotland. Historical Biology, 20, 39-50.

Swinney, G. N. (2010). Edward Forbes (1815-1854) and the exhibition of natural order in Edinburgh natural order. Archives of Natural History, 37, 309-317.

Swinney, G. N. (2010). Robert Jameson (1774-1854) and the concept of a public museum. Archives of Natural History, 37, 235-245.

Swinney, G. N. (2011). An afterword on afterlife. In S. J. M. M. Alberti (Ed.), The Afterlives of Animals: A Museum Menagerie (pp. 219-233). Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press.

Swinney, G. N. (2012). What do we know about what we know? The museum ‘register’ as museum object. In S. Dudley, A. J. Barnes, J. Binnie, J. Petrov & J. Walklate (Eds.), The Thing About Museums: Objects and Experience, Representation and Contestation – Essays in Honour of Professor Susan M. Pearce (pp. 31-46). Abingdon & New York: Routledge.

Swinney, G. N., & Heppell, D. (1997). Public and privileged access: a historical survey of admission charges and visitor figures for part of the Scottish National Collections. Book of the Old Edinburgh Club (new series), 4, 69-84.

Royal Museum

Edinburgh Museum of Science and Art

practice

space

Towards an historical geography of a ‘National’ Museum: the Industrial Museum of Scotland, the Edinburgh Museum of Science and Art and the Royal Scottish Museum, 1854-1939

Thesis or Dissertation

Doctoral

PhD Doctor of Philosophy