Topics in Museum Studies: Science, Art, and Invisible Objects

in Natural History Museums from the Enlightenment to Present

MS3330 // Spring 2020
Program in Museum Studies // New York University

Professor Elaine Ayers Class Meetings: Wednesdays 10 – 1

[email protected] Museum Studies Seminar Room
240 Greene Street, 4th Floor Office Hours: Tuesdays 3 – 5
New York, NY, 10003 -or by appointment-

DINOSAURS, birds of paradise, planetary eclipses, transitory facial expressions, bodily interiors:
over the last few hundred years, natural historians have engaged with scientific and artistic
methodologies to try to visualize and translate objects that have otherwise evaded the human hand
and eye. Natural history and anatomical collections, from the private Wunderkammern of the early
modern period to the AMNH’s award-winning Hall of Biodiversity, have consistently struggled
with the politics and poetics of representing objects without names, immaterial materials, and
objects that, in fact, never existed at all. Using these “invisible objects” as our entry point over the
course of the semester, we will trace the rise and fall of private and public natural history and
anatomical collections from the Enlightenment to the present. Ranging from so-called monsters to
rotting plants and stars, we approach the history of museums by investigating how the contentious
categories of science and art have worked together (and sometimes at odds with one another) to
make visible objects that have eluded collection, classification, preservation, and display.

Course Requirements:
Students are expected to attend class weekly and to thoughtfully contribute to discussion as well
as completing all weekly readings and coming in with questions, visiting each required site,
leading class discussion twice during the semester as scheduled, and completing assigned
coursework. Over the course of the semester you will write two 750-word site visit response papers
and one 750-word project proposal with an annotated bibliography. Students may choose between
two options for their final project: a “traditional” paper or a “creative” project, both of which will
involve original primary and secondary source research while presenting an original historical
argument. I encourage students to regularly attend office hours and / or to contact me to schedule
one-on-one meetings throughout the semester. Note that the syllabus is subject to change per my
discretion.

Grading:
Class Participation: 10%
Leading Class Discussion: 10%
Site Visit Responses: 20% (10% each)
Midterm Project Proposal: 20%
Final Project: 40%

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Site Visits:
Throughout the semester, students will be required to visit five museums or cultural sites outside
of class: The New York Botanical Garden -or- the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, The Hayden
Planetarium -or- The Jennifer Chalsty Planetarium, Green-Wood Cemetery (focusing on the
Morbid Anatomy pop-up exhibition), The American Museum of Natural History -or- the Liberty
Science Center (note that this can be combined with your planetarium visit), and the Cooper-
Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum (focusing on the Nature by Design exhibition). I will ensure
that you have free admittance to the institution. Please plan to spend a significant amount of time
there and analyze the institution with a critical eye while taking notes on your visit.

Participation:
Weekly participation is required, and students are expected to come to class having done all of the
reading thoughtfully and carefully with questions and comments ready for discussion. Please take
notes while reading and be prepared to talk about each text at length and to share your experience
at site visits, if scheduled. If you miss class because of an illness or emergency, get in touch with
me as soon as possible (within 2 days) to arrange a make-up assignment. I will work with you on
a case-by-case basis if more than one absence is necessary.

Following university policy, students are allowed absences for legitimate religious reasons (see
the NYU Policy on Religious observances at: http://www.nyu.edu/about/policies-guidelines-
compliance/policies-and-guidelines/university-calendar-policy-on-religious-holidays.html).
Students must notify the professor in advance of any anticipated absence for religious observation.
Two absences will result in a drop of one-half letter grade for the course; three absences will result
in the drop of one letter grade for the course. Laptops are permitted in class to accommodate
accessibility issues and to cut down on printing, but cell phones should be turned off unless you
have accommodation requirements issued by the Center for Students with Disabilities.

Everyone comes into class with different learning styles and forms of experience. Some students
might come into class with strong opinions about readings while others might process their
thoughts more slowly and through collaboration. Some of the topics that we discuss are political,
complex, and occasionally polarizing—this course will function as a safe space with a zero-
tolerance policy for racist, sexist, or ableist discourse, and everyone should feel comfortable to
raise questions, voice confusion, and / or debate difficult and confronting issues in writing
assignments and in class.

Required Texts:
All required readings will be posted to NYUClasses for this course—you do not need to buy any
books. In lieu of course books, I recommend that you become a student member of the American
Alliance of Museums (AAM). Site visits are required for this course and, while I will work to keep
costs minimal (if not nonexistent) on these visits, an AAM membership will ensure that you can
enter almost every museum in the country for free.

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Assignments:
Students are required to (1) lead class discussion twice throughout the semester; (2) write two site
visit response papers due on the Wednesday of the corresponding week; (3) write one project
proposal due at midterm; and (4) produce one final project, either a traditional research paper or a
“creative” option fulfilling similar scholarly standards and accompanied by a full bibliography.
Your final project, whether traditional or creative, must be approved by me during a one-on-one
meeting.

For all written work, please use double-spaced 12-point font with standard margins. Always
include your name and page numbers, and cite your sources using Chicago Turabian Style
formatting. Papers must be submitted online via NYUClasses before class on the stated deadline
(by 10am on Wednesdays); no hard copies please. If your paper is not submitted on time, it will
be penalized by a half-letter grade per day; after one week, without an agreed-upon extension, I
will no longer accept your paper.

Leading Class Discussion: Each student will lead class discussion twice during the
semester. Please spend the first ~10 minutes of discussion summarizing the readings: who
are the authors? What is each reading arguing and why? What sorts of sources are they
relying on and what methodologies are they using? What did you find interesting,
successful, surprising about the readings? Then offer up 2-3 questions for the class or
“themes” to think about. These should be a jumping-in point for the rest of our discussion.

Site Visit Responses: Choose two sites from our syllabus and write an approximately 750-
word response to your time there. What did you focus on at the site and why? What was
successful and what was missing? Put the site into conversation with at least one reading
from that week and / or into conversation with larger themes or other readings from the
syllabus while thinking about how physically being in this space brought new perspectives,
insights, or provocations to your scholarly interpretation. What lingering questions do you
have? What about the site challenged you, stuck with you, or changed the way you thought
about the readings? I encourage you to take notes while you’re at the site. These responses
are due by class-time on the corresponding week of the visit.

Midterm Project Proposal: Submit an approximately 750-word proposal for your final
project describing an “object” (broadly defined) that you plan to investigate historically
and conceptually. While you don’t have to focus on a specific object (i.e. herbarium
specimen no. 1001 at the NYBG) you should have examples of where we might find objects
like this and what they might look like (i.e. by including some sample herbarium specimen
images). In your proposal please introduce your topic, provide any necessary background
information, and include a brief plan for your research going forward and / or any
challenges you expect to face and might need advice on. Your proposal must also include
an annotated bibliography of 5 sources, at least one of which should be a primary source.
Each annotation (between 3-5 sentences) should summarize the author’s argument and
methodologies.

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 Following submission of the proposal, each student must meet with me one-on-one to
discuss your research plan and to obtain approval to move forward with your intended
project. If necessary, I may ask you to resubmit an edited / updated proposal.

Final Project: Option 1 is a 3750 – 5000-word research paper (approximately 15 – 20

pages double-spaced) that incorporates both primary and secondary sources intro an
original argument about the “object” that you chose at midterm. Using themes from the
course and your outside research, investigate your “object” by developing a change over
time narrative, using comparative case studies, or working with broader theoretical
concepts to tell us something new and historically significant. You must use at least 10
sources, 3 of which must be primary. Please submit a full bibliography with your paper and
underline or highlight your thesis statement in the introduction to your paper.

Option 2 is a “creative” project that encompasses the same amount of research as the
“traditional” paper but presents those findings in new ways. Like the research paper, you
will rely on both primary and secondary sources and form an original argument about your
“object.” Your argument can be presented visually, three-dimensionally, orally, virtually—
the sky is the limit. Remember, per our discussions this term, that interpretations of objects
always present, uphold, or challenge intellectual, cultural, and social arguments. With this
in mind, how might you create your own nontextual argument using historical sources?
Projects might take the form of (for example) reconstructed or reimagined cabinets of
curiosity, homemade podcasts, scientific illustrations or models, maps, proposed syllabi
for new courses, sample lectures, or exhibition designs. Alongside your project, you must
submit a full bibliography following the same guidelines as Option 1 and a brief research
statement (around a paragraph) presenting your argument and explaining your methods.

Statement on Plagiarism:
Plagiarism—employing ideas or phrases that are not your own without explicitly and sufficiently
crediting their creator—will not be tolerated in your written or creative work. If you plagiarize, the
Program in Museum Studies and the university will be notified of your actions and appropriate
steps will be taken. As a result, I urge you to err on the side of caution: take careful notes, cite your
sources carefully and consistently, and do not leave assignments to the last minute. For this and
other university policies, see the Graduate School of Arts and Science Policies and Procedures
Manual.

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University Statement for Students with Disabilities:
New York University is committed to providing equal educational opportunity and participation
for students with disabilities. It is the university’s policy that no qualified student with a disability
be excluded from participating in any university program or activity, denied benefits of any
university program or activity, or otherwise subjected to discrimination with regard to any
university program or activity. The Henry and Lucy Moses Center for Students with Disabilities
(CSD) determines qualified disability status and assists students in obtaining appropriate
accommodations and services. Any student who needs a reasonable accommodation based on a
qualified disability is required to register with the CSD for assistance.
Contact Information:
Henry & Lucy Moses Center for Disabilities
726 Broadway, 2nd Floor
Website // 212.998.4980

University Resources:
NYU Bobst Library Librarian for the Fine Arts
Giana Ricci, Art History + Museum Studies Librarian
[email protected] // 212.998.2519

NYU Expository Writing Program’s Writing Center

411 Lafayette, 4th Floor
[email protected] // 212.998.8866 // Website

NYU Information Technology Services

10 Astor Place, 4th Floor
[email protected] // 212.998.3333 // Website

NYU Office of Global Services

561 LaGuardia Place
[email protected] // 212.998.4720 // Website

NYU Counseling and Wellness Services

726 Broadway, Suite 471
[email protected] // 212.998.4780 // Website

Office of LGBTQ+ Services

60 Washington Square South, Suite 602
[email protected] // 212.998.4424 // Website

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Schedule of Classes + Readings:

Week 1 // 29 January // Introduction: What is an Invisible Object?

• M. Norton Wise, “Making Visible,” Isis 96 (2006): 75-82.
• Daniela Bleichmar, “Learning to Look: Visual Expertise Across Art and Science in
Eighteenth-Century France,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 46.1 (2012): 86-106.

Week 2 // 5 February // Plants, Animals, Minerals: Ordering New Worlds

Site Visit: New York Botanical Garden -or- Brooklyn Botanic Garden
• Pamela Smith, “Art, Science, and Visual Culture in Early Modern Europe,” Isis 97.1
(2006): 83-100.
• Londa Schiebinger, “Lost Knowledge, Bodies of Ignorance, and the Poverty of Taxonomy
as Illustrated by the Curious Fate of Flora pavonis, an Abortifacient,” in Caroline Jones
and Peter Galison, Picturing Science, Producing Art (New York: Routledge, 1998), 125-
144.
• Bettina Dietz, “Mobile Objects: The Space of Shells in Eighteenth-Century France,”
British Journal for the History of Science 39.3 (2006): 363-82.
• Staffan Müller-Wille, “Names and Numbers: ‘Data’ in Classical Natural History, 1758 –
1859,” Osiris 32 (2017): 102-28.
• Mary Terrall, Catching Nature in the Act: Réamur and the Practice of Natural History in
the Eighteenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), Chapter 6: “A
Spectacle Pleasing to the Mind: Natural History on Display” (132-60).
• Natalie Lawrence, “Fallen Angels: Birds of Paradise in Early Modern England,” The
Public Domain Review, 4 April 2018.

Week 3 // 12 February // Bodily Interiors: Anatomy Museums + The Art of Dissection

• Barbara Maria Stafford, Body Criticism: Imaging the Unseen in Enlightenment Art and
Medicine (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991), Chapter 1: “Dissecting” (47-130).
• Katherine Park, Secrets of Women: Gender, Generation, and the Origins of Human
Dissection (New York: Zone, 2010), Introduction (13-38) and Chapter 5: “The Empire of
Anatomy” (207-60).
• Sarah Bond, “The Lasting Influence of the Waxen Venus on Studies of Anatomy,”
Hyperallergic, 29 May 2019.
• Sachiko Kusukawa, Picturing the Book of Nature: Image, Text, and Argument in Sixteenth-
Century Human Anatomy and Medical Botany (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2012), Chapter 10: “The Canon of the Human Body: Vesalius’s De Humani Corporis
Fabrica” (199-227).

Week 4 // 19 February // Cosmos: Scientific Expeditions + The Art of Mapping the Heavens
Site Visit: Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History -or- Jennifer Chalsty
Planetarium at Liberty Science Center
• Simon Schaffer, “On Astronomical Drawing,” in Caroline Jones and Peter Galison, eds.,
Picturing Science, Producing Art (New York: Routledge, 1998): 441-74.

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 • Omar Nasim, Observing by Hand: Sketching the Nebulae in the Nineteenth Century
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), Chapter 2: “Use and Reception: Biography
of Two Images” (83-121).
• Theresa Levitt, “I Thought This Might Be Of Interest:’ The Observatory as Public
Enterprise,” in David Aubin, Charlotte Bigg and Heinz Otto Sibum, eds., The Heavens on
Earth: Observatories and Astronomy in Nineteenth-Century Science and Culture (Durham:
Duke University Press, 2010), 285-304.
• Elizabeth Yale, “Astronomy’s Evolving Gender Dynamics,” The Atlantic, 4 April 2016.
• Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, “The Social Event of the Season: Solar Eclipse Expeditions and
Victorian Culture,” Isis 84.2 (1993): 252-77.

Week 5 // 26 February // Terra Incognita: Visualizing Information on Paper

Guest Lecturer: Anthony Acciavatti, Assistant Professor of Architecture at Yale University
• Michael Dettelbach, “The Face of Nature: Precise Measurement, Mapping, and Sensibility
in the Work of Alexander von Humboldt,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological
and Biomedical Science 30 (1999): 473-504.
• Interactive Website: “Maps Are Territories,” David Chambers, David Turnbull, and Helen
Watson. <territories.indigenousknowledge.org>
• Katy Barrett, “Looking for the Longitude,” British Art Studies 2 (2016).
• Daniela Bleichmar, Visible Empire: Botanical Expeditions and Visual Culture in the
Hispanic Enlightenment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), Chapter 3:
“Painting as Exploration” (79-122).

Week 6 // 4 March // Deep Time: Geology, the Darwinian Revolution + Evolutionary Exhibits
• Tony Bennett, “Museums and Progress: Narrative, Ideology, Performance,” in Museums,
Power, Knowledge: Selected Essays (London: Routledge, 2017): 103-134.

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 • James Secord, “Monsters at the Crystal Palace,” in Soraya de Chadarevian and Nick
Hopwood, eds., Models: The Third Dimension of Science (Stanford: Stanford University,
2004): 138-69.
• Julia Voss, Darwin’s Pictures: Views of Evolutionary Theory, 1837 – 1874 (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 2010), Chapter 2: “Darwin’s Diagrams: Images of the Discovery of
Disorder” (61-126).
• Martin Rudwick, Scenes from Deep Time: Early Pictorial Representations of the
Prehistoric World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), Chapter 3: “Monsters of
the Ancient World” (59-96).

Week 7 // 11 March // Spirits + Rotting Flora: Photography Pt. 1: The Objectivity Problem
Site Visit: Green-Wood Cemetery (focus on Morbid Anatomy exhibition)
DUE: Midterm Project Proposal
• Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, Objectivity (New York: Zone, 2007), Prologue:
“Objectivity Shock” (11-16) and Chapter 3: “Mechanical Objectivity” (115-90).
• Jennifer Tucker Nature Exposed: Photography and Eyewitness in Victorian Science
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013), Chapter 2: “Testing the Unity of
Science and Fraternity,” 65-125.
• Carol Armstrong and Catherine de Zegher, eds., Ocean Flowers: Impressions from Nature
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), Introduction: Ocean Flowers and their
Drawings” (69-86) and Chapter 6: “On Purple and the Genesis of Photography” (271-88).
• Philip Ball, “Worlds Without End,” The Public Domain Review, 9 December 2015.

Week 8 // 18 March // No Class—Spring Break

Week 9 // 25 March // Black + White: Photography Pt. 2: Portraiture + the Anatomy of Race
• Beatriz Pichel, “From Facial Expressions to Bodily Gestures: Passions, Photography and
Movement in French Nineteenth-Century Science,” History of the Human Sciences 29.1
(2016): 27-48.

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 • Molly Rogers, Delia’s Tears: Race, Science, and Photography in Nineteenth-Century
Science (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), Chapter 1: “Discovery” (5-21),
“Delia” (3-4) and “Renty” (23-24). I highly recommend reading more of this excellent
book, which is available online through our library system!
• Suzanne Schneider, “Louis Agassiz and the American School of Ethnoeroticism:
Polygenesis, Pornography, and Other ‘Perfidious Influences,’ in Maurice Wallace and
Shawn Michelle Smith, eds., Pictures and Progress: Early Photography and the Making
of African American Identity (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012): 211-43.
• Elizabeth Edwards, “Evolving Images: Photography, Race, and Popular Darwinism,” in
Diana Donald and Jane Munro, eds., Endless Forms: Natural Science and the Visual Arts
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009): 166-93.

Week 10 // 1 April // Color + Vision: Perception at the Turn of the Century

• Peter Galison, Chapter 7: “Image of Self,” in Lorraine Daston, ed., Things That Talk:
Object Lessons from Art and Science (New York: Zone, 2004), 257-296.
• “Colors,” Radiolab Podcast (WNYC), 21 May 2012 [68 minutes].
• Benjamin Breen, “Victorian Occultism and the Art of Synesthesia, The Public Domain
Review, 19 March 2014.
• Eugene Thacker, “Black On Black,” The Public Domain Review, 9 April 2015.
• Kelley Wilder, “Visualizing Radiation: The Photographs of Henri Becquerel,” in Lorraine
Daston and Elizabeth Lunbeck, eds., Histories of Scientific Observation (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2011): 349-68.
• Robert Michael Brain, The Pulse of Modernism: Physiological Aesthetics in Fin-de-Siècle
Europe (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2015), Chapter 4: “Algorithms of
Pleasure: Art as Expert System” (95-149).

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Week 11 // 8 April // Dinosaurs: The Rise of American Field Science
Site Visit: American Museum of Natural History -or- Liberty Science Center
• Karen Rader and Victoria Cain, “From Natural History to Science: Display and the
Transformation of American Museums of Science and Nature,” Museum and Society 6.2
(2008): 152-71.
• Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, “Place and the Museum: The Smithsonian Institution, National
Identity, and the American West, 1846-1896,” in Charles Withers and David Livingstone,
eds., Geographies of Nineteenth-Century Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2011): 399-438.
• Episode 38: “Simulated Worlds (Act Two): Dinosaur Exhibit,” This American Life
Podcast (WBEZ Chicago), 11 October 1996. [16 minutes] I also recommend Act One,
Travels in Hyperreality, on wax museums!
• Marianne Sommer, History Within: The Science, Culture, and Politics of Bones,
Organisms and Molecules (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016), Part 1: “History
in Bones: Henry Fairfield Osborn at the American Museum of Natural History” (21-133);
-focus on- Introduction and Chapter 5: “History Within Between Science and Fiction.”

Week 12 // 15 April // Mustard Gas + Bombs: Bodily Fragmentation + the Art of War
• Samuel Alberti, “Drawing Damaged Bodies: British Medical Art in the Early Twentieth
Century,” Bulletin for the History of Medicine 92 (2018): 439-73.
• John Hersey, “Hiroshima,” The New Yorker, 23 August 1946.
• Otto Mayr, “The ‘Enola Gay’ Fiasco: History, Politics, and the Museum,” Technology and
Culture 39.3 (1998): 462-73.
• Teri Weissman, The Realisms of Berenice Abbott: Documentary Photographs and Political
Action (Berekely: University of California Press, 2011), Chapter 5: “PhotoPhysics” (171-
208).
• Soraya de Chadarevian, “Portrait of a Discovery: Watson, Crick, and the Double Helix,”
Isis 94.1 (2003): 90-105.

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Week 13 // 22 April // Talkative Objects: Thing Theory + The Limits of Control
Site Visit: Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum (focus on Nature by Design exhibition)
• Lorraine Daston, Things That Talk: Object Lessons from Art and Science (New York:
Zone, 2007), Introduction: “Speechless” (9-26) and Chapter 6: “Glass Flowers” (223-56).
• Guro Flinterud, “Polar Bear Knut and His Blog,” in Liv Emma Thorsen, Karen Rader and
Adam Dodd, eds., Animals on Display: The Creaturely in Museums, Zoos, and Natural
History (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013), 192-214.
• Jessica Riskin, “The Defecating Duck, or, The Ambiguous Origins of Artificial Life,”
Critical Inquiry 29.4 (2003): 599-633.

Week 14 // 29 April // The Anthropocene: Climate Change at the Museum

• Emily Scott, “Feeling in the Dark: Ecology at the Edges of History,” American Art (2014):
14-20.
• Elizabeth Kolbert, “The Climate of Man, Pts. 1-3,” The New Yorker, April 2005.
• Rob Nixon, “The Anthropocene: The Promise and Pitfalls of an Epochal Idea” and Josh
Wodak, “Artificial Coal Reef,” in Gregg Mitman, Marco Armiero and Robert Emmett,
eds., Future Remains: A Cabinet of Curiosities for the Anthropocene (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2018).
• Donna Haraway, “Tentacular Thinking: Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene,” e-flux
75 (2016).
• Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of
Life in Capitalist Ruins (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015), Prologue: “Autumn
Aroma” (1-10) and Part 1: “What’s Left?” (11-44).

Week 15 // 6 May // AI, Ultra-Black + Space: The Future of (Natural) History

DUE: Final Research Project
• Ian Bogost, “The AI-Art Gold Rush is Here,” The Atlantic, 6 March 2019.
• Natalie Angier, “Ultra-Black is the New Black,” The New York Times, 11 November 2019.
• Eli Kintisch, “The Quest to Mimic Nature’s Trickiest Colors,” Nautilus, December 2019.
• Peder Anker, “The Ecological Colonization of Space,” Environmental Humanities 10.2
(2005): 239-68.
• Bruno Strasser, “The Experimenter’s Museum: GenBank, Natural History, and the Moral
Economies of Biomedicine,” Isis 102.1 (2011): 60-96.

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