Collections and Collecting

Tad Brown (University of Cambridge), “Peanut Traces: Collecting Arachis from the Telegraph Line in Brazil”
 
"In this paper, I trace the enrolment a specific peanut, Arachis nambyquarae Hoehne, into scientific networks as a method for understanding how Brazil became known as the geographic origin of peanuts. The species was named after an Amerindian group in Matto Grosso as well as the scientist who published its first description. Botanists would later reclassify this peanut as a variety within domesticated Arachis. The taxonomic reversal offers support for the argument that the study of plant diversity includes ideas about human diversity."
 

Brooke Penaloza Patzak, FWF Schrödinger Fellow/ Visiting Scholar, University of Pennsylvania: “Geographic Provinces as a Doctrine and Framework for Scientific Collection and Display, 1860-1900"

Katherine Arnold, London School of Economics: "Interpreting the Collector's Logic: The Pursuit of Desiderata in Early Nineteenth-Century Southern Africa"
 

Andrea Marshall, Centre for Media and Celebrity Studies: "Zines as Nonbinary Objects and Questions of Privilege"

Katherine McLeod, New York University: "What to do about rats in the archive," from her dissertation, "How to Display a Hoatzin: Ecology, Eugenics, and Zoology in the Early 20th Century United States"

Maura C. Flannery, Professor Emerita, St. John's University, NY/Research Associate, A.C. Moore Herbarium, University of South Carolina, Columbia:  "Can Digital Collections Bridge the Gap between the Humanities and Science?"

Jesse Smith, Research Curator at the Science History Institute in Philadelphia, on “Instruments, Industries, and Invertebrates: Curating Water in the Public History of Science.” 
 
Jesse will be giving us a brief virtual tour of the new “Downstream” exhibit at the Science History Institute and will talk through the process of its development. Then, we will turn to a broader discussion about the relationship between the history of science, public history, and museum exhibitions. Jesse has included two articles (attached) that offer some background about the collections and exhibitions at the Science History Institute.

Nushelle de Silva, Massachusetts Institute of Technology: "Conditioning Art, Air, and Action: Exhibition Conservation in the Art Museum"

Anisha Gupta, American Philosophical Society: "Conservation is not neutral: an anti-colonial framework for collections care"

Nadine Löhr, Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities: "Collecting Arabic Scientific Manuscripts - Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos in Mashhad, Iran"

Alison Laurence, Stanford University: "The Quick and the Dead at La Brea: Affective Encounters with Ice Age Los Angeles"

Lukas Rieppel, Brown University: "Locating the Central Asiatic Expedition: Circulation and Accumulation in Early 20th Century Natural History"

Adrianna Link, American Philosophical Society: "Cultural Diplomacy, Conservation, and Computers: Designing an International Center in the Smithsonian Quadrangle"

Elaine Ayers, New York University: "Had There Been No Witnesses: Corpse Flowers, Monstrosity, and the Politics of Discovery in Early-Nineteenth Century Colonial Botany"