Museums Work
Difficulties incidental to museum demonstrations…
- By: Cynthia Brown
- 20th February
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Sir William Turner, MA President 1901
Some reflections from the report of the Museums Association Annual Conference in 1901 give an interesting insight into how ‘demonstrations’ about museum objects were – or should be in the view of the speaker – conducted, and about attitudes to museum education in general. These were offered by F.W. Rudler, FGS, Curator of the Museum of Practical Geology, on the basis that ‘few who have acted as demonstrators, if they have given serious attention to the wants of their audience, can have felt that their performance has been altogether satisfactory’:
‘In order that demonstration be successful, it is essential that everyone present should hear what the demonstrator says, and see the objects which he is describing. The speaker should face his party, be in a slightly elevated position, and, while he is referring to a given specimen, all the audience should be able to see the specimen at the same time, so as to follow the words of the demonstrator. But how rarely can these conditions be fulfilled!
‘In the first place it is necessary to secure a large area in which the party can assemble in the immediate neighbourhood…. This is by no means always easy… most museums become, in the course of time, so crowded that the cases are necessarily placed too close together, and the area thus becomes so broken up that only comparatively narrow passages are free. The visitors are, therefore, more or less scattered, and only a favoured few can see and hear…
‘In most Museums, a large proportion of the specimens will be exhibited in upright Wall-cases, and when the demonstrator turns to these objects his back is presented to the audience. This is obviously a disadvantage to his hearers; but let that pass. He points to a certain shelf, and the few spectators immediately at his side see what he is referring to, and appreciate his description; but the others forming the large outside group, see nothing until the demonstrator and the little circle around him pass to the next case. By the time, however, that the outsiders can obtain a glimpse of the specimens in the first case, the demonstrator has begun to talk about the second… No wonder, then, that they get bewildered, lose interest in the demonstration, and leave without carrying away any educational benefit…
‘Probably the demonstrator himself in many cases hardly realises the difficulty under which he labours. He, if no one else, has seen all that he is talking about, from beginning to end of his discourse. Of his failure to reach the out-skirts of his party, he remains practically ignorant… At the same time, the outside members, sensible of their obligations to the Curator for his trouble, are too polite to murmur dissatisfaction…
Mr Rudler had ‘been induced to bring the subject forward in order to ask the members of this Association if they think the difficulties which have forced themselves upon my attention are real; and, if so, how they are in the habit of dealing with them…’. His own preferred method was to limit the numbers in any group to twelve, and deliver a lecture on selected specimens in a classroom or lecture room. However:
’it seems to me far preferable not to disturb the Collections. My suggestion is that the typical objects upon which the demonstration is founded should be photographed from specimens in the Museum, and that lantern slides of these specimens, and not the objects themselves, should be exhibited on the screen during the demonstration. The camera and the lantern ought, in these days, to be adjuncts to every Museum’.
In the discussion that followed his paper, others ‘admitted that the difficulty dealt with… was a real one’, but opinions as to how to deal with it varied. One delegate ’was disposed to extend Mr. Rudler’s limit of a dozen to 40 or 50′, while another ‘spoke of the great usefulness of the lantern… and said that it had been for some time the practice to use lantern-slides with lime-light, even in the daytime, in Cambridge lecture rooms’. Mr Carr, Curator of the Castle Museum and Art Gallery in Nottingham, ‘gave an amusing account of his experience of Museum demonstrations’ there: he had ‘not yet used the lantern, and was very grateful for the suggestion. He would also advise the use of a short syllabus, to be distributed among those attending the demonstration’.
In the view of another, ‘teaching was best accomplished by lectures etc. outside the Museum, supplemented by walk through the galleries. Demonstrations, in the ordinary sense of the term, seemed scarcely necessary’. But was this part of the job of the Curator at all? Most delegates agreed felt that it was, but one, while admitting ‘the use of occasional demonstrations…’, felt obliged to point out ‘the danger of the Curator degenerating into a guide if demonstrations became frequent’…
It’s notable that the educational function of museums at this time was seen as applying almost exclusively to adults rather than children. In the course of my research, however, I turned up an account of the introduction of classes for children at Salisbury Museum during the First World War, prompted by educational development as a ‘burning topic of the day’ and the opportunities this seemed to offer museums in a post-war world. A topic for another day…
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