[NHCOLL-L:3227] RE: [Bulk rate e-mail] From the Chronicle of Higher Education -- Natural History Museums

[John Crane]

The entire article is available without a subscription at this address:
http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2006/10/2006100901c/careers.html 

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-nhcoll-l at lists.yale.edu
[mailto:owner-nhcoll-l at lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Jane MacKnight
Sent: Friday, October 27, 2006 7:42 AM
To: NHCOLL-L (E-mail)
Subject: [Bulk rate e-mail] [NHCOLL-L:3225] From the Chronicle of Higher
Education -- Natural History Museums
Importance: Low

I'm not a subscriber, so I cannot provide the entire article but it's
worth tracking down from the October 9, 2006 issue.  A university
colleague provided a hard copy to me and it speaks to why I and probably
others am drawn to natural history museums.

Here's what available without subscription!

Jane MacKnight
Registrar
Cincinnati Museum Center
T (513) 287-7092
F (513) 455-7169
Cell (513) 478-8168


AN ACADEMIC IN AMERICA
The Decline of the Natural-History Museum An English professor who would
have been a scientist, but for physics, laments the push-button,
plush-toy mentality of today's museums By THOMAS H. BENTON Sometimes I
wonder whether I have chosen the wrong profession.
How many English professors, after all, have a 6-foot-long reproduction
of Rudolph Zallinger's The Age of Reptiles mural from Yale's Peabody
Museum hanging in their home office above cabinets full of fossils,
butterflies, and seashells?
As a child, I was, like many kids, fascinated by dinosaurs. One of my
most powerful early memories is of visiting the great hall of
Philadelphia's Academy of Natural Sciences: an enormous 19th-century
gallery decorated, as I recall, with wrought iron, entablatures, oak,
and marble. I remember my footsteps echoing as I walked toward the
polished railing behind which stood the Hadrosaurus, more than 20 feet
tall and impossibly ancient. The mounted skeleton - brown, lacquered,
and crackled, like a Rembrandt painting - revealed itself gradually as
my eyes adjusted to the light.
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