The Classic: The natural history museum

Authors

  • Albert Eide Parr

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5617/nm.3728

Abstract

1939: «- if we do recognize that one of the main research missions of a natural history museum lies in the ecological types of investigation, we must obviously also admit the perfect appropriateness of handling live, as well as dead material, in the museum to the extent that the observations on the living individuals may tend to confirm or to explain the conclusions arrived at by the study of the preserved samples of natural populations.»

1950: «The side of nature which concerns society most of all is not undisturbed nature, but nature as the environment of man, and that is the field in which the educational efforts of the natural history museums could make their greatest contribution to human thought, welfare, and progress today.»

1980: «- it seems clear that museums, at least in the larger cities, may be more important as independently explorable additions to the environment itself than in the simple role of didactic interpreters of experiences gained from other sources.» 

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