Lives and afterlives of labels: museum exhibition labels as historical sources & the science and technology exhibition labels of National Museums Scotland, 1864-1967

Abstract

Despite their ubiquitousness and position as crucial components in the tradition of museum display, exhibition labels have received scant attention as primary sources within the scope of the history of museums. Traditionally relegated into the camps of the practical and the pedagogical, research on museum labels has principally centered on their production and reception rather than their potential as historical sources. In response, this thesis explores the many potentials and possibilities of historical museum exhibition labels. Combining perspectives from museology, archival science, and science and technology studies, this research reframes museum labels as dynamic material and textual objects and stakes a claim for their inclusion in the work of unpacking and understanding the histories of museums and their associated objects, exhibitions, and individuals.

The principal focus of this thesis is a previously unstudied archive of over 20,000 historical exhibition labels produced between 1864 and 1967 by what would become the Science and Technology Department of the National Museum of Scotland. The archive is believed to be one of the most complete historical label collections in existence and an assemblage of this scope and scale has never been researched in detail. Collectively, the labels provide a unique opportunity to test the applicability of historical museum labels to a myriad of questions and investigative approaches, establishing them as a new line of research within the history of museums.

The primary research question driving investigation of the label archive – How may museum exhibition labels be engaged with as historical materials and texts? – is subsequently supported by explorations into the ways labels can (re)construct histories of museum interpretive and labeling practices. To engage with those lines of inquiry, the thesis contextualizes and unpacks the lives and afterlives of the archive’s labels through three distinct perspectives. First, a historiography of the long museological tradition of writing about exhibition labels maps the archive and its labels onto the broader landscape of museum label history. Second, a novel theoretical framework positions historical museum exhibition labels as intricate and complex intellectual, cultural, social, and professional products and presents new perspectives for understanding and analyzing them. Third, a set of three detailed case studies investigates distinct assemblages of the historical label collection to consider the intricate and interwoven histories between labels, objects, and the Museum through (1) the labels associated with a Boulton and Watt beam engine, (2) the labels associated with a collection of lighthouse models, and (3) the marginalia added to labels within the archive’s record books. Collectively, this thesis explores the richness, depth, and multi-dimensionality of the archive and its labels through three lenses of work: work ascribed to labels within the history of museums, work done with labels within exhibitions, and work done to labels within the archive.

As the first piece of extensive scholarship on historical museum exhibition labels, this research privileges labels by centering them within an entanglement of institutions, collections, objects, exhibitions, and individuals. Within the necessary work of museums to engage in the critical discussions and decisions around the ideologies that govern their sourcing, collecting, storing, displaying, and interpreting practices, labels have often been obscured from consideration by the shadows of charismatic objects, individuals, and organizations. This thesis reclaims space for the label and champions its place in the ongoing work on both the history and the future of museums.