scholarly journals A Mexican case study on a centralised database from world natural history museums

2002 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 45-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adolfo G. Navarro S. ◽  
A. Townsend Peterson ◽  
Alejandro Gordillo-Martínez
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Natural History Museums ◽  
History Museums

Natural Object or Element of an Artwork? Case Study: Artists, Artworks and Exhibitions in Cluj, Romania

2020 ◽  
Vol 65 (Special Issue) ◽  
pp. 159-172
Author(s):  
Liviu Răzvan Pripon
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Art Museums ◽  
Natural Object ◽  
Natural History Museums ◽  
Art Galleries ◽  
History Museums ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Natural Objects ◽  
The Relationship

"Natural object or element of an artwork? Case Study: Artists, Artworks and Exhibitions in Cluj, Romania. In this article, we discuss the relationship between art and natural objects such as stuffed animals, skins, bones, dried plants or minerals and their aesthetical value from their position as artworks or elements of an artwork. In Cluj, between 2017 and 2019, artworks and exhibitions which integrate this type of practices and natural history materiality flourished. We aim to compose an inventory that could contribute to the archive of local art events, artworks, and artists in order to serve further analysis of local specificity, which could eventually find relevance in the theoretic approaches of art. In conclusion, we underline some of the theoretical approaches of the dynamics of natural object’s values and of the procedures established by organizations such as museums and galleries. Keywords: art galleries, art museums, natural history museums, natural object, BioArt"

Approaching Archaeological Museum Collections through the Concept of Assemblage: The Case Study of the Jesuit Mission San Ignacio Miní (1610–1631)

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 615-631
Author(s):  
Evelyn R. Nimmo
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Contextual Information ◽  
Museum Studies ◽  
Museum Collections ◽  
Natural History Museums ◽  
Initial Formation ◽  
Archaeological Material ◽  
History Museums ◽  
Museum Archives

In Brazil, as in most countries, history and natural history museums are the repositories of rich collections of excavated archaeological material. One of the major challenges in working with these collections is the paucity of information available regarding the original excavations, which raises important questions that archaeologists and museum studies professionals have been grappling with for several decades: what interpretive value do these collections have without any contextual information, and are they worth maintaining in museum archives that are facing continuing crises in space and resources? This article uses the concepts of entanglement and assemblage to discuss a collection of ceramics excavated from one of the first Spanish Jesuit missions in colonial Paraguay, San Ignacio Miní (1610–1631), and housed at the Museu Paranaense in Curitiba, Brazil. Despite the lack of contextual information from the 1963 excavation, we can begin to explore the entangled pasts, present, and future of these objects by tracing the trajectory of the collection from the initial formation through excavation and contemporary analysis. Innovative approaches are needed to address methodological and theoretical concerns in analyzing archaeological museum collections to ensure that the knowledge and potential insights entangled in these collections are not lost.

Fund natural-history museums, not de-extinction

Nature ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 598 (7879) ◽  
pp. 32-32
Author(s):  
Corrie S. Moreau ◽  
Jessica L. Ware
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Natural History Museums ◽  
History Museums

scholarly journals The Global Museum: natural history collections and the future of evolutionary science and public education

PeerJ ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. e8225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Freek T. Bakker ◽  
Alexandre Antonelli ◽  
Julia A. Clarke ◽  
Joseph A. Cook ◽  
Scott V. Edwards ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Educational Innovation ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Academic Community ◽  
Full Potential ◽  
Natural History Museums ◽  
Long Term Storage ◽  
History Museums ◽  
Natural History Collections ◽  
Museum Data

Natural history museums are unique spaces for interdisciplinary research and educational innovation. Through extensive exhibits and public programming and by hosting rich communities of amateurs, students, and researchers at all stages of their careers, they can provide a place-based window to focus on integration of science and discovery, as well as a locus for community engagement. At the same time, like a synthesis radio telescope, when joined together through emerging digital resources, the global community of museums (the ‘Global Museum’) is more than the sum of its parts, allowing insights and answers to diverse biological, environmental, and societal questions at the global scale, across eons of time, and spanning vast diversity across the Tree of Life. We argue that, whereas natural history collections and museums began with a focus on describing the diversity and peculiarities of species on Earth, they are now increasingly leveraged in new ways that significantly expand their impact and relevance. These new directions include the possibility to ask new, often interdisciplinary questions in basic and applied science, such as in biomimetic design, and by contributing to solutions to climate change, global health and food security challenges. As institutions, they have long been incubators for cutting-edge research in biology while simultaneously providing core infrastructure for research on present and future societal needs. Here we explore how the intersection between pressing issues in environmental and human health and rapid technological innovation have reinforced the relevance of museum collections. We do this by providing examples as food for thought for both the broader academic community and museum scientists on the evolving role of museums. We also identify challenges to the realization of the full potential of natural history collections and the Global Museum to science and society and discuss the critical need to grow these collections. We then focus on mapping and modelling of museum data (including place-based approaches and discovery), and explore the main projects, platforms and databases enabling this growth. Finally, we aim to improve relevant protocols for the long-term storage of specimens and tissues, ensuring proper connection with tomorrow’s technologies and hence further increasing the relevance of natural history museums.

scholarly journals NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUMS

2021 ◽  
pp. 24-28
Author(s):  
Dimítri De Araújo Costa ◽  
Nuno Gomes ◽  
Harold Cantallo ◽  
Carlos Antunes
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Public Awareness ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Scientific Culture ◽  
Natural History Museums ◽  
Type Specimens ◽  
Local Fauna ◽  
History Museums ◽  
The World ◽  
Object Of Study

Society in general is distant from scientific culture, it is required to bring scientific knowledge closer to the population. In this context, an effective and attractive way for scientific dissemination is the establishment of natural history museums, which are institutions of knowledge, displaying the past. Natural history museums have the natural world as their object of study; and their collections may contain the most diverse types of materials (local and/or from various parts of the world), such as zoological, botanical, geological, archaeological, among others. Scientific collections are the largest and most important source of authoritative biodiversity data, contributing to studies of biodiversity composition, evolutionary (morphological and genetic), biogeographical, phenological, as well as geological. The materials present in these collections may serve for temporal comparison, being useful to produce predictive models. Likewise, they have a fundamental role in safeguarding type specimens, i.e. the first organisms identified to describe and name a new species. In addition, there is the component available to visitors in general, in order to raise public awareness on the preservation of the local fauna and flora and of other places in the world. In this way, the museums serve both the academic-scientific public and visitors who come to these sites for recreational purposes. It is intended to promote, in Vila Nova de Cerveira, the Natural History Museum of the Iberian Peninsula - NatMIP (“Museu de História Natural da Península Ibérica”), which intends to collect materials for scientific purposes, mainly Iberian.

scholarly journals Gender, Museums and Science: Wanda Hanke’s Ethnological Collections (1933–1958)

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mariana M. O. Sombrio
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
South America ◽  
Natural History Museums ◽  
Extensive Data ◽  
History Museums ◽  
Indigenous Groups ◽  
Medicine And Philosophy ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
Female Scientists

Abstract This paper will explore the significance of the expeditions under- taken by Wanda Hanke (1893-1958) in South America, of the networks she established in the region, as well as of her contributions to ethnological studies, in particular her compilation of extensive data and collections. Through Hanke's experience, it is possible to elucidate aspects of the history of ethnology and that of the history of museums in Brazil, as well as to emphasize the status of female participation in these areas. Wanda Hanke spent 25 years of her life studying the indigenous groups of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil and Paraguay and collecting ethnological objects for natural history museums. Trained in medicine and philosophy, she began to dedicate herself to ethnological studies in her forties, and she travelled alone, an uncommon characteristic among female scientists in the 1940s, in Brazil.

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