Collectors, Displays and Replicas in Context: What We Can Learn from Provenance Research in Science Museums

Pantalony, David

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-58436-2_14

Collectors, Displays and Replicas in Context: What We Can Learn from Provenance Research in Science Museums

David Pantalony⁴

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First Online: 06 July 2017

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Part of the book series: Archimedes ((ARIM,volume 52))

Abstract

In this chapter, I outline three prominent themes that have emerged in my provenance research in the collections of the Canada Science and Technology Museum (CSTM). First, I explore the role collectors have had on the kinds of histories we collect, preserve, research and display, and the means through which their activities build historical value for a body of preserved materials. Through the history of collectors (many are scientists), we depart from traditional narratives and learn more about their own time, culture, preoccupations and conceptions of science. Second, I look at the historical function of display in the history of museum objects, and their surprisingly long history of being on display, in many cases much longer than their technical use. These display histories tell us much about the nature of scientific communication, culture and identity. Third, I look at the history of scientific replicas and recreations, and their function in making and shaping the history and culture of science. I treat replicas as artifacts from their time of construction, and not just as representations of a previous historical moment.

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Notes

1.
Trevor Levere, “Lavoisier: Language, Instruments and the Chemical Revolution “in Nature, Experiment, and the Sciences: Essays on Galileo and the History of Science, ed. Stillman Drake, Trevor Harvey Levere, and William R. Shea (Dordrecht; Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1990), 207–23, at 209–10.
2.
Trevor Levere, Chemists and Chemistry in Nature and Society, 1770–1878, ed. Trevor Levere (Aldershot: Variorum, 1994), 313–32.
3.
Under the supervision of Levere, I adopted this as a central theme in my PhD dissertation on Rudolph Koenig and the instruments he constructed related to the acoustical research of Hermann von Helmholtz. David Pantalony, Altered Sensations: Rudolph Koenig’s Acoustical Workshop in Nineteenth-Century Paris (Dordrecht; New York: Springer, 2009).
4.
A. Truman Schwartz, “Instruments of the Revolution: Lavoisier’s Apparatus,” Bulletin for the History of Chemistry 5 (1989), 31–34; Marco Beretta, “Lavoisier’s Collection of Instruments: A Checkered History / Marco Beretta.,” in Musa Musaei: Studies on Scientific Instruments and Collections in Honour of Mara Miniati., ed. Paolo Galluzzi, Marco Beretta, Cario Triaric (Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 2003), 313–34.
5.
The iconic 1788 Jacques-Louis David portrait of Lavoisier, his wife and instruments has had an equally complex ownership history. Metropolitan Museum of New York, Inventory No. 177.10. Purchase, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wrightsman Gift, in honor of Everett Fahy, 1977. Full provenance for MMA 1977.10: Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, Paris (1788–d. 1794); Mme Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, later Countess Rumford, Paris (1794–d. 1836); her great-niece, comtesse Pierre-Léon Bérard de Chazelles (Jeanne-Marie-Laure-Hélène-Gabrielle Ramey de Sugny), Paris, and later the Auvergne (1836–1876 [his death] or 1888 [her death]); her son, comte Étienne Bérard de Chazelles, Paris, and château de la Canière, near Aigueperse (by 1888–d. 1923; his estate, 1923–24; sold by his heirs to Wildenstein); [Wildenstein, Paris and New York, 1924–25; sold to Rockefeller]; John D. Rockefeller Jr., New York (1925–27); Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, later Rockefeller University, New York (1927–77; sold to MMA)
6.
Igor Kopytoff, “The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process,” in The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, ed. Arjun Appadurai (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 64–91.
7.
There is a wide variety of histories of collectors and collections that shed light on the history of science museums: William J.H. Andrewes, “The Life and Work of David Pingree Wheatland (1898–1993),” Journal of the History of Collections 7 (1995), 261–68; Ken Arnold, Cabinets for the Curious: Looking Back at Early English Museums, Perspectives on Collecting (Aldershot, England; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006); Edmund De Waal, The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Family’s Century of Art and Loss, 1st American ed. (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010); Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy, Studies on the History of Society and Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); O. R. Impey and Arthur MacGregor, The Origins of Museums: The Cabinet of Curiosities in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century Europe (Oxford Oxfordshire, New York: Clarendon Press; Oxford University, 1985); Richard Kremer, “A Time to Keep and a Time to Cast Away: Thoughts on Acquisitions for University Instrument Collections,” Rittenhouse 22 (2008), 188–210; Marta C. Lourenço, Between Two Worlds; the Distinct Nature and Contemporary Significance of University Museums and Collections in Europe (PhD Dissertation, Conservatoire national des arts et metiers, 2005); David Pantalony, Richard L. Kremer, and Francis J. Manasek, Study, Measure, Experiment: Stories of Scientific Instruments at Dartmouth College, 1st ed. (Norwich, Vt. Lebanon, NH: Terra Nova Press; Distributed by University Press of New England, 2005); Simon Schaffer, “Object Lessons,” in Museums of Modern Science: Nobel Symposium 112, ed. Svante Lindqvist, Marika Hedin, and Ulf Larsson (Canton, MA: Science History Publications/USA, 2000), 62–76.
8.
Silke Ackermann, Richard L. Kremer and Mara Miniati, Scientific Instruments on Display, History of Science and Medicine Library (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2014).
9.
K. B. Staubermann, Reconstructions: Recreating Science and Technology of the Past (Edinburgh: NMS Enterprises, 2011).
10.
The apparent misspelling appears as “Townsite” on another marker in the collection, “Klondike Townsite.” Canada Science and Technology Museum (CSTM) Artifact Number 1973.0762.
11.
Canada Lands Survey Records, FB37158 CLSR YT and Plan No. 9060 CLSR YT
12.
CSTM Artifact Number 1973.0761
13.
R. T. McCurdy 1960, FB.34390, Canada Lands Survey Records.
14.
L.M. Sebert, “One Hundred and Sixty-Three Landmarks,” The Canadian Surveyor XIX, no. 2 (1965): 220–23; J.H. Webb, “Ralph William Clark (1907–1970),” SLSA Corner Post: Quarterly Newsletter of the Saskatchewan Land Surveyors’ Association 29, no. 4 (2008), 124–27.
15.
Documentation of Canadian Landmarks, Dept. of Energy Mines & Resources, Surveys and Mapping Branch, Supplementary Information for CSTM Artifact Numbers 1973.0683–1973.0817.
16.
Webb, “Ralph William Clark (1907–1970).”
17.
Sebert, “One Hundred and Sixty-Three Landmarks,” p. 221. Information about this specific marker can be found in Supplementary Information CSTM Artifact Number 1973.0708.
18.
CSTM Artifact Number 1973.0708
19.
CSTM Artifact Number 1973.0716
20.
Don W. Thomson, Men and Meridians: The History of Surveying and Mapping in Canada (Ottawa: R. Duhamel, Queen’s Printer, 1967), vol. 2, 277–8.
21.
CSTM Artifact Number 1973.0782
22.
James Grierson MacGregor, Vision of an Ordered Land: The Story of the Dominion Land Survey (Saskatoon: Western Producer Prairie Books, 1981), 12, 44, 52, 61, 111.
23.
CSTM Artifact Number 1973.0694
24.
The CSTM has several instruments, notebooks, books, manuals and photos from McLatchie in the artifact file nos. 1978.0715–1978.0753. One photo album contains several photos from his service in the Intelligence Corps in 1885.
25.
CSTM Artifact Number 1973.0786.
26.
W.A. Austin Sept. 1894, FB347 CLR, Canada Lands Survey Records.
27.
Gaston Bolduc 1958, Plan No. 50311 CLSR, and Gaston Bolduc 1957 FB.1279 CLSR, Canada Lands Survey Records.
28.
Daniel Rueck, “I Do Not Know the Boundaries of This Land, but I Know the Land Which I Worked’: Using HGIS in the Study of Indigenous Environmental History,” in Historical GIS in Canada, ed. Jennifer Bonnell and Marcel Fortin (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2014), 129–52, on 138
29.
Mapping a Northern Land: The Survey of Canada, 1947–1994, ed. Gerald McGrath and L. M. Sebert (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999).
30.
Supplementary Information CSTM Artifact Numbers 1973.0683–1973.0817
31.
Thomson, Men and Meridians: The History of Surveying and Mapping in Canada.
32.
A. J. Birrell, Into the Silent Land: Survey Photography in the Canadian West, 1858–1900: A Public Archives of Canada Travelling Exhibition, ed. Public Archives of Canada (Ottawa: Public Archives Canada, 1975); Courtney C. J. Bond, Surveyors of Canada, 1867–1967, ed. Surveying Canadian Institute of (Ottawa: Canadian Institute of Surveying, 1966); Thomson, Men and Meridians: The History of Surveying and Mapping in Canada.
33.
L. M. Sebert, The Evolution of Surveying and Navigational Instruments and Their Use in Mapping (Ottawa: National Museum of Science and Technology, 1990); L. M. Sebert, Mapping a Northern Land: The Survey of Canada, 1947–1994; Surveying in Canada: A Proposal for an Exhibit (Ottawa: National Museum of Science and Technology, 1989).
34.
Supplementary Information CSTM Artifact Number 1993.0200
35.
David Pantalony, “Biography of an Artifact: The Theratron Junior and Canada’s Atomic Age,” Scientia Canadensis 34 (2011), 51–63; Ackermann, Kremer, and Miniati, Scientific Instruments on Display.
36.
V. Ennis Pilcher, Early Science and the First Century of Physics at Union College, 1795–1895 (Schenectady, N.Y.: Union College, 1994).
37.
Peggy Aldrich Kidwell, Amy Ackerberg-Hastings, and David Lindsay Roberts, Tools of American Mathematics Teaching, 1800–2000 (Baltimore; Washington, D.C.: Johns Hopkins University Press; Smithsonian Institution, 2008); Amy Shell-Gellasch, “The Olivier String Models at West Point,” Rittenhouse 17, no. 2 (2003), 71–84.
38.
Carlota Simões and Carlos Tenreiro, “O Gabinete de Geometria da Faculdade de Ciências e a sua colecção de modelos para o ensino,” in História da ciência na Universidade de Coimbra: 1772–1933, ed. Carlos Fiolhais, Carlota Simões, Décio Martins (Coimbra: Universidade de Coimbra, 2013), 193–207.
39.
Shell-Gellasch, “The Olivier String Models at West Point,” 78.
40.
R.M. Brain, Going to the Fair: Readings in the Culture of Nineteenth-Century Exhibitions (Cambridge: Whipple Museum, 1993).
41.
C. W. Merrifield, A Catalogue of a Collection of Models of Ruled Surfaces, Constructed by M. Fabre De Lagrange; with an Appendix, Containing an Account of the Application of Analysis to Their Investigation and Classification (London: South Kensington Museum, 1872), 3.
42.
Ibid, 4.
43.
Ibid, 4.
44.
In 2011 the Science Museum exhibited their mathematical instruments and models in “From Order to Obsession: A View of Mathematics.” Curated by Jane Wess, the exhibition highlighted four themes in the history of mathematics – beauty, power, necessity and play. The catalogue placed the models in “Necessity” highlighting their practical functions. “Most people engage in Mathematics not because they consider them beautiful, find it powerful or enjoy it, but because they simply have to.” Science Museum, From Order to Obsession: A View of Mathematics (London: Science Museum, 2011), section “Necessity.”
45.
CSTM Artifact Number 1973.0241
46.
In 1989, CSTM showed one in an exhibition called Exploring the Collection. In 1990, CSTM displayed a model in “A Way with Math” mostly devoted to contemporary mathematical education and teaching. In 1998 curators placed “Intersection of Two Cylinders” (Artifact Number 1973.0241) in the entrance lobby as part of an open-collection display.
47.
Robert Bean’s Exhibition List displaying this instrument: “Obsolescence and Inscription: Robert Bean and Ilan Sandler”. Saint Mary’s University Art Gallery, Halifax, Nova Scotia. October 19 – December 1, 2013; “273 (brushing information against information).” Circuit Gallery, Toronto. November 2011; “Illuminated Manuscripts” and “Polyphony,” Centre culturel canadien, Paris, France. September 26 – November 16, 2011; “Illuminated Manuscripts,” McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology (The Coach House), the University of Toronto, a site-specific installation commissioned by the CONTACT Photography Festival and the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology, May – August, 2011
48.
Edward Jones Imhotep and I co-curated an exhibit related to this theme – “Broken: An Interactive Exhibit” at the Materiality: Objects and Idioms in Historical Studies of Science and Technology, York University, May 2–3, 2013.
49.
Charles Eames, Ray Eames, and International Business Machines Corporation, A Computer Perspective (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973). Cohen’s involvement with the IBM collection dates back to the late 1960s, see I. Bernard Cohen Papers, 1889–1987. Finding Aid. CBI 182 University of Minnesota Libraries. Charles Babbage Institute.
50.
I. B. M. Gallery of Science and Art, A Calculator Chronicle: 300 Years of Counting and Reckoning Tools: The Mechanization of Arithmetic (Armonk, N.Y.: IBM Co., 1983), p. 22. Report on the Exhibition “A Calculator Chronicle” at the IBM Gallery of Science and Art, Draft #2, I. Bernard Cohen, 1985. (Box 1). I. Bernard Cohen Papers, 1889–1987. Finding Aid. CBI 182 University of Minnesota Libraries. Charles Babbage Institute, accessed October 30, 2015.
51.
Henry Prevost Babbage, Babbage’s Calculating Engines: A Collection of Papers (Los Angeles: Tomash, 1982), 339–343. Science Museum Inventory No. 1862–89. David Baxandall and Jane Pugh, Calculating Machines and Instruments (London: Science Museum, 1975), 20.
52.
Bruce Collier and James H. MacLachlan, Charles Babbage and the Engines of Perfection (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); Doron Swade, “Pre-Electronic Computing,” in Dependable and Historic Computing Essays Dedicated to Brian Randell on the Occasion of His 75th Birthday, ed. Cliff Jones and John L. Lloyd, Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Springer, 2011), 58–83.
53.
Babbage, Babbage’s Calculating Engines: A Collection of Papers, 339–343. Science Museum Inventory No. 1862–89; Baxandall and Pugh, Calculating Machines and Instruments, 20.
54.
Henry Prevost Babbage, Babbage’s Calculating Engines Being a Collection of Papers Relating to Them, Their History and Construction, Calculating Engines (London: E. and F.N. Spon, 1889), preface.
55.
D. Roegel, “Anecdotes: Prototype Fragments from Babbage’s First Difference Engine,” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 31, no. 2 (2009), 70–75.
56.
Computer History Museum, Catalogue No. 102711127
57.
International Business Machines Corporation. et al., “Mathematica: A World of Numbers... And Beyond, Presented by IBM,” (New York: IBM, 1961).
58.
Pat Kirkham, Charles and Ray Eames: Designers of the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1995), 263–308.
59.
Ibid., 297.
60.
Ibid., 263.
61.
Ibid., 300.
62.
I. Bernard Cohen Papers, 1889–1987. Finding Aid. CBI 182 University of Minnesota Libraries. Charles Babbage Institute.
63.
IBM Gallery of Science and Art, A Calculator Chronicle: 300 Years of Counting and Reckoning Tools: The Mechanization of Arithmetic (Armonk, N.Y.: IBM, 1983).
64.
Carol Vogel, “I.B.M. To Close Its Midtown Gallery,” New York Times, March 23 1993.
65.
“American Abstract Artists 26th Annual Exhibition,” IBM Gallery, New York, NY, Feb. 5–24.
66.
IBM Gallery of Science and Art, A Calculator Chronicle: 300 Years of Counting and Reckoning Tools: The Mechanization of Arithmetic, 29.
67.
Corporation International Business Machines et al., Leonardo Da Vinci, an Exhibition of His Scientific Achievements: Collections of the Fine Arts Department, International Business Machines Corporation (New York: IBM, 1951).
68.
In addition to the sources listed below, I have interviewed Guatelli’s stepson, Joseph Mirabella who was Guatelli’s stepson through marriage since 1947. Mirabella worked in Guatelli’s workshop from 1964 to 1993. He continued running the business until 2005.
69.
Claudio Giorgione, “Leonardo Da Vinci: The Models Collection,” ed. Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci (Milan: Museum Collections, 2009). The first effort to display models had been at the First National Exhibition of the History of Science in Florence. Ibid., 16–19. Claudio Giorgione, “The Birth of a Collection in Milan: From the Leonardo Exhibition of 1939 to the Opening of the National Museum of Science and Technology in 1953,” Science Museum Group Journal 4, no. 4 (March 22, 2016), doi:10.15180/150404; Matt Landrus, “Re-reading Heydenreich’s positivist assessment of Leonardo’s achievement,” Romano Nanni and Maurizio Torrini (eds.), Leonardo “1952” e la cultura dell’Europa nel dopoguerra, Biblioteca Leonardiana (Firenze: L.S. Olschki, 2013), 321–338 on 323–325. Francis C. Moon, The Machines of Leonardo Da Vinci and Franz Reuleaux (New York: Springer, 2007), 201; Time Magazine, “Art: Great Creator,” XXXIII, no. 22, (May 29, 1939).
70.
New York Museum of Science and Industry et al., An Exhibition of the Scientific Achievements of Leonardo Da Vinci, Loaned by the Italian Ministry of Popular Culture (New York: New York Museum of Science and Industry, 1940).
71.
Further research and documents are needed to verify these accounts and complete the biographical information about Guatelli. I interviewed Joseph Mirabella on March 4, 2015 to verify some of the main biographical claims mentioned in these sources: Popular Science, “Leonardo Comes to Life,” Popular Science (October 1949), 164–65; Chicago Tribune, “Leonardo’s Inventions,” Chicago Sunday Tribune Graphic Magazine (March 19 1950), 7; Brendan Gill, “Early I.B.M. Man,” New Yorker (December 13, 1951), 23–24; Erez Kaplan, “The Controversial Replica of Leonardo da Vinci’s Adding Machine,” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 19, no. 2 (1997), 62–63; Jim Strickland, “Who Was That Guy? Roberto Guatelli,” Computer History Museum Volunteer Information Exchange 2, no. 3 (2012); John P. Wiley Jr., “After Five Centuries, a Devoted Modeler Gives Shape to Genius,” Smithsonian (1987), 90–95.
72.
Gill, “Early I.B.M. Man.”; Los Angeles County Museum and Ludwig Heinrich Heydenreich, Leonardo da Vinci; an exhibition of his scientific achievements (Los Angeles, 1949), 40.
73.
Joseph Mirabella personal communication, March 4, 2015; Strickland, “Who Was That Guy? Roberto Guatelli.”
74.
Popular Science, “Leonardo Comes to Life.”; Chicago Tribune, “Leonardo’s Inventions.”; Gill, “Early I.B.M. Man.”; “Making Modern Models from Designs Centuries Old, an Italian Scholar Is...Updating Da Vinci,” The Rotarian(December 1952).
75.
New Yorker (Dec 13, 1958) and (Jan 10, 1959).
76.
The Milan models became the foundation of the newly formed National Museum of Science and Technology. Giorgione, “Leonardo Da Vinci: The Models Collection,” 20–24. Giorgione, “The Birth of a Collection in Milan”; Jim Bennett, “The Science Museum and the Leonardo Da Vinci Quincentenary Exhibition of 1952,” Science Museum Group Journal 4, no. 4 (March 22, 2016), doi:10.15180/150403. In 1953 “IBM Italia” donated several of the models for the new Leonardo museum in Vinci. See, History of the Leonardiano Museo in Vinci, http://www.museoleonardiano.it/eng/museum/the-history accessed Oct. 28, 2015. Also see, Romano Nanni et al., Leonardo and the Artes Mechanicae, First English language edition. ed. (Milano, Italy; New York, NY: Skira Editore Distributed in USA, Canada, Central & South America by Rizzoli International Publications, 2013); Nanni and Torrini, Leonardo “1952.”
77.
Kaplan, “The Controversial Replica of Leonardo da Vinci’s Adding Machine.”
78.
University Brandeis et al., Leonardo Da Vinci; an Exhibition of Scale Models from the IBM Collection and Books, Sketches and Drawings from the Bern Dibner Collection of Vinciana, May 29th through June 22, 1967. Being the First Exhibition in the New Samuel and Rieka Rapaporte Treasure Hall, Brandeis University, Waltham, Mass (Waltham, Mass, 1967).
79.
Kaplan, “The Controversial Replica of Leonardo da Vinci’s Adding Machine.”
80.
I. Bernard Cohen Papers, 1889–1987. Finding Aid. CBI 182 University of Minnesota Libraries. Charles Babbage Institute.
81.
Joseph Mirabella personal communication, March 4, 2015.

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Curator of Physical Sciences and Medicine at the Canada Science and Technology Museum, Ottawa, ON, Canada
David Pantalony

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Caltech, Pasadena, California, USA
Jed Buchwald
College of Arts & Science, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada
Larry Stewart

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Pantalony, D. (2017). Collectors, Displays and Replicas in Context: What We Can Learn from Provenance Research in Science Museums. In: Buchwald, J., Stewart, L. (eds) The Romance of Science: Essays in Honour of Trevor H. Levere. Archimedes, vol 52. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58436-2_14

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58436-2_14
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