Category: Book Review

What is the purpose of a book about a museum? This question sprang to mind as I read James Hamilton’s The British Museum: Storehouse of Civilisations, because I was baffled by it. It could have been a great opportunity to add to existing histories and help readers think about the present day British Museum. Instead it presents a hackneyed and awkwardly written history that does its readers and the British Museum a huge disservice.

The British Museum publishes two books on its history: Marjorie Caygill’s The History of the British Museum, and David Wilson’s The British Museum: A History. Unsurprisingly, neither tackles the more difficult subjects relating to the Museum, such as the colonial origins of its collections or governance or sponsorship. Unfortunately, Hamilton’s account is equally sanitised. It is notable that the book is part of a series on “the history of civilisation”, a tone so in keeping with the British Museum’s self-image it might explain the lack of critique.

In fact, it’s hard to find anything new in Hamilton’s history. Like the other books, it takes a chronological approach, starting with Hans Sloane’s Will. Along the way the usual events and themes in the British Museum’s history are described: Montague House, not-so-public access, the King’s Library, the new building, the addition of departments, the dispersal of its collections, the British Library… Chronology is a difficult structure: it’s hard to know where to end, or to draw a conclusion about on-going events. Hamilton draws the main storyline to a close with the opening of the British Library. That’s surprising because the late twentieth century saw a period of turmoil in the Museum that related directly to its management and governance in the preceding centuries. Those events had a huge impact on the British Museum of today, so it seems strange not to mention them.

Drawing the history to an end in the early 1970s also means there’s no discussion of Neil MacGregor signing the Declaration of the Importance and Value of Universal Museums, which in effect doubled down on the British Museum’s previous refusals to repatriate stolen objects. It’s hard to discuss the British Museum without mentioning its colonial origins and present day responses to them, yet where Hamilton does mention this it is disingenuous, to put it mildly. Hans Sloane’s connection to slavery is described as income “from plantations his wife had inherited” (p16), rather than his active complicity as outlined in James Delbourgo’s biography. Similarly, in the nineteenth century artefacts “arrive” because museums are “institutions of suction, drawing stuff towards them” (p 52), rather than being active participants in collecting stolen objects. Hamilton acknowledges the dispute over the Parthenon marbles, but later appears to dismiss concern about them while simultaneously sighing about protests over oil company sponsorship.

The lack of original content is exacerbated by Hamilton’s uneven style, which veers from pretentious (e.g. Sloane’s “courageous embarkation on dangerous travel expressed itself multifariously” (p 16)), to sensationalist (Sloane’s Will contained a “killer demand” that made “hostages” of the trustees (p24)). The book is peppered with faux-academic tropes including footnotes *and* endnotes. There are appendices containing an odd selection of information, but very few primary sources. A lack of precision gives rise to some ambiguities, such as the date the Natural History Museum came into being.

The British Museum is a flawed institution, albeit one that has a significant role in the past and present of museums. A book that discusses its history, warts and all, and places it in context of contemporary discussions about museums could enable everyone to have a more informed discussion about its future. This book is not it.

The British Museum: Storehouse of Civilisations by James Hamilton. Published by Head of Zeus imprint, Browns Books for Students. ISBN 978-1786691835

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There are few people who would deny that the British Museum’s history is steeped in colonialism. Apologists have chosen to gloss over this past by claiming the Museum now has a special status as a universal museum. James Delbourgo’s new biography of Hans Sloane, Collecting the World: The Life and Curiosity of Hans Sloane, should make them think again, and give pause for deep reflection to all museums with colonial connections. 

Delbourgo charts Sloane’s rise from an Ulster-born outsider to a wealthy, well-connected member of the London elite. En route Sloane became physician to the governor of Jamaica, an event that would transform his life. It not only conferred status to the nascent physician, it was here that Sloane collected the specimens that made up his Natural History of Jamaica and established him as a significant collector. The trip also led to his marriage to the widow of a plantation owner, giving him an income from sugar production that would help sustain his future collecting. As Delbourgo makes clear, Sloane’s collecting was only achieved through his complicity in slavery and colonialism.

It is hard to find any redeeming features in Sloane’s character when reading about his time in Jamaica. With a colonial, capitalist outlook, Sloane saw the Jamaican landscape as containing commodities to be owned, traded and used by white English owners. His treatment of slaves was abhorrent. He was brutal to them as patients and documented their public torture and execution without emotion or intervention. He considered “Indians and blacks” as specimens to be inspected and scrutinised. His writing amplified racist stereotypes, while his accounts of sugar production erased the slaves whose labour created it.

And yet it was the Jamaican landscape and natural history that established Sloane as a collector of repute, and it was slaves who did some of that collecting for him. Their contribution was, of course, written out of Natural History of Jamaica, alongside the artists and engravers whose meticulous drawings recorded specimens and illustrated the book. Sloane the arriviste was not acknowledging anyone else.

Delbourgo elegantly details the way in which Sloane’s collecting and scientific and medical practices combined to further all elements of his life. Sloane’s rising status in his practice provided him with huge wealth and a network of contacts throughout the expanding empire. And through this network he expanded his collections. Delbourgo places this story against a deftly woven backdrop of political and social contexts and histories of science and medicine to create a rich and compelling account.

There are parts of Collecting the World that will ring true for present-day curators, particularly the logistics of documenting and cataloguing the collections. The catalogues give pause for reflection on the ways knowledge is created through collecting material culture. Delbourgo points out that much of Sloane’s collection, now dispersed across several institutions, is unused and unexamined. The original descriptions, written through a colonial lens, are extant and we can no longer collect other contemporaneous accounts. It’s a reminder to be reflective about present-day practices and prejudices.

Delbourgo’s style is easy to read, though in his eagerness to pack the book with detail it is rather uneven. The chapters on processes of collecting are over-long and meandering. The weakest chapter is the last, on the development of the British Museum. Here Delbourgo falters and appears uncritical and unable to bring current thought and debate in museology to his account. A significant omission from the book is women. We hear almost nothing about Elizabeth, Sloane’s wife, apart from her money, and his daughters get a mere mention. A few female collectors get a couple of pages between them, but otherwise women are absent.

Nonetheless, Collecting the World is an important read. It shows why the glib responses to museums’ colonial origins are unacceptable, and it should make us reflect on the continued deification of Sloane and other colonial collectors. It is essential reading for all in museums, particularly directors and trustees.

Collecting the World: The Life and Curiosity of Hans Sloane by James Delbourgo. Published by Allen Lane, 2017.

This article first appeared in Museums Journal in winter 2017.

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It’s a longstanding question: how do you make science more accessible? Many initiatives have attempted this, and museums have often played a key role. The most recent attempt was the public understanding of science movement (PUS), which began in response to a perceived loss of confidence in science. Now widely discredited in its approach, PUS has become shorthand for an authoritarian, ‘cognitive-deficit’ stance that tried to make ‘the public’ more appreciative of science. But controversial issues involving science keep hitting the headlines, and the distance between the scientific and non-scientific communities remains. So how should museums present science and allow visitors to engage in a dialogue?

Creating Connections contains the selected papers from a conference that discussed just that. Enabling full public engagement and dialogue about science is a new task for museums, and Creating Connections should perhaps be viewed as a discussion document. It argues for ‘public understanding of research’ (PUR) and sets out history, rationale, strategies and examples and advice from other media. However, rather than leading the way in a key debate this book is a missed opportunity.

At the core of the book is a distinction between the public understanding of research, and the public understanding of science. Unfortunately none of the contributors seem too sure of what PUR is, although two main definitions filter through. The primary definition is also a rationale. PUR is about engagement with issues: where PUS imposed, PUR will debate. This is to be greatly welcomed, but sadly the strategies and case studies set out in the book imply that the reality will be somewhat different. The key problem seems to be in considering the audience. Engagement requires listening, not assuming authority, not considering ‘the public’ as a homogeneous mass and considering all views as valid. Yet here authors talk about what ‘the public’ need to know, or to learn, in order to understand ‘the scientific process’. This doesn’t sound like engagement; the tone is the same old cognitive deficit approach to a better public appreciation of science. 

Suggestions for methods of engagement don’t fare much better. Albert and Edna Einseidel give a succinct account of a continuum of engagement, but other contributors pay only lip service to the most interactive forms such as consensus conferences. Events at which scientists meet ‘the public’ take precedence. It is easy to see the advantages of this to the scientists, but what will visitors gain? No one seems to have asked. There doesn’t seem to be any acknowledgement of the fact that most scientific issues have a political and/or ethical nature. It’s no good talking to scientists if politicians make the decisions. The Einseidels suggest that avoidance of politics will be foremost in many museums’ minds and the book seems to bear out their hunch.

The second definition of PUR is given by the dubious distinction between ‘finished’ and ‘unfinished’ science (when does science become ‘finished’, and who says so?). It turns out that ‘unfinished’ refers to new science that hits the headlines. Many of the strategies and examples of PUR in museums are about exhibits on these stories, and are more concerned with revealing scientific process than with engagement. Five chapters are given to print and broadcast professionals to tell us how they choose and develop science features. It turns out that this is quite straightforward: it’s the story, stupid. But what comes through in these chapters is how difficult it can be to turn a story around quickly, despite the amazing amounts of resources news organisations have. Other contributors acknowledge this and suggest forming networks so that museums can share resources and workload. But no-one asks why museums should try to compete with better resourced, well-established daily news media. Nor do they ask why ‘unfinished’ science should be any better than ‘finished’ science at illustrating the complexities of a subject inextricably linked to other practices and values.

There is one author who does raise concerns about the limited vision of PUR presented in Creating Connections. Don Pohlman’s two chapters, especially the afterword, elegantly articulate his concerns about this nascent field. They are one of the few points in the book where the subject is given careful thought and reflection. It is interesting, and disappointing, that the other noteworthy chapters are written by non-museum professionals. As well as the Einseidels’s contribution, Bruce Lewenstein and Rick Bonney neatly outline some of the complexities surrounding science and the public. Tim Radford’s article is a sparking showcase of faced-paced journalistic style, and Christine Cansfield-Smith’s account of the Discovery building at CSIRO in Canberra is extremely interesting and insightful. But it is Pohlman who stands out as the person who makes a considered overview of the subject.

Also of interest is the slightly puzzling choice of papers making up Creating Connections. A list of delegates in the appendix shows that the conference was international, and yet of the 32 contributors to the book, 24 are from the US, six from the UK (three of whom are from the Science Museum) and one each from Australia and Canada. There are no papers from the rest of Europe, in spite of the fact that the most cited talks were by François Vescia of La Cité des Sciences and delegates from the Hygiene Museum, Dresden. I would really liked to have read their contributions, not least because the Hygiene Museum has organised consensus conferences.

There is no doubt that there is a need to show and explore how closely science is intertwined with society. And there is no doubt that for many issues involving science, engagement by all interested parties on equal terms is desirable. Museums can play a role in this. The distinction between public understanding of research and public understanding of science is pretty shaky, but it is inevitable that any new field will raise more questions than it answers. What is noticeable in Creating Connections is how many questions are not asked. The debate needs to be much more sophisticated than that presented here.

“Creating Connections: : museums and the public understanding of current research” Eds: D Chittenden, G Carmelo, B V Lewenstein. AltaMira Press ISBN 075910476X

This article was first published in Museums Journal, November 2004

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