[NHCOLL-L:3230] Re: From the Chronicle of Higher Education -- Natural History Museums

[Chris Mayer]

it's online:
http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2006/10/2006100901c/careers.html


At 7:41 AM -0400 10/27/2006, Jane MacKnight wrote:
>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.
>Subscription needed to read entire article....