Issue 07 of the Science Museum Group Journal is now online
he Spring 2017 issue of the Science Museum Group Journal is on the theme of Sound and Vision. Read it online here: http://journal.sciencemuseum.
Issue 07 of the Journal collects scholarly articles from research
related to sound and vision from across the Group. Several of these
focus on sound and visual elements within collections, most of which are
in store rather than on display. James Mooney, for example, discusses
sound objects in the collection of composer Hugh Davies, while Joanne
Gooding looks at a collection of NHS glasses through the lens of design.
Melissa Dickson’s article takes a single historical object – the
Ammoniaphone – and looks at how contemporary claims for its
effectiveness tell us much about Victorian thinking about science and
the voice. Phillip Roberts, meanwhile, uses a detailed case-study, that
of Philip Carpenter, to demonstrate the move of early instrument makers
into the commercially lucrative production of scientific visual toys
(such as kaleidoscopes and magic lanterns).
Many of these articles (and the Sound and Vision theme) came out of the
inaugural Research Conference in September 2016. They are in part
published now to mark the re-launch of the newly named Science and Media
Museum in March. Director Jo Quinton-Tulloch introduces the issue and
rightly draws attention to the importance of the Journal in discussing
the impact of museums and institutional practice on culture and society.
Several articles address this historically – for example, Jennifer Rich
on the history of how the Science Museum has used sound in interpreting
exhibits, or James Mansell on the wider social and political issues at
stake within the 1935 Noise Abatement exhibition. But the issue also
reflects on more recent developments with articles by Elizabeth Edwards,
Ben Burbridge and Michael Terwey providing different perspectives on
the move to a more STEM-focused approach at the Science and Media Museum
in Bradford.
In addition, we have a review of the new Science and Technology
galleries at National Museums Scotland, and a book review of Nicholas
Thomas’s The Return of Curiosity. For a 20% discount on the book see the
news pages of the Journal.