Karen A. Rader is associate professor in the Department of History at Virginia Commonwealth University. Victoria E. M. Cain is assistant professor in the Department of History at Northeastern University.
"Life on Display is an engaging book with appeal for specialists
and nonspecialists alike. Illustrations of interactive displays,
including the "Transparent Man," provide graphic evidence that
supports the text....An important contribution that shows how
American museums responded to changing values in science education,
corporate sponsorship, and consumer culture."-- "Isis"
"Gracefully written and deeply researched, Life on Display
documents the social and intellectual forces that remodeled
American natural history museums during the twentieth century,
changing science-driven exhibition halls into centers for mass
diversion. Rader and Cain have created a must-read for scholars of
popularization of science and for anyone with an interest in
science museums today."--Marcel Chotkowski LaFollette, author of
Science on American Television
"In Life on Display we meet the 'museum men' (and they were mainly
men) and other staff who struggled variously with questions of the
relationship between museum research and display, how to raise
funding, and how best to deal with sometimes recalcitrant visitors
or overenthusiastic donors (yet another horned toad or dog flea);
and also with matters such as into which pose an elephant should be
taxidermied or how to cope with the sheer vibrancy of biodiversity.
This wonderfully detailed account of the changing world of US
museums of natural history and science takes us from miked-up
grasshoppers to shrimp ballets, from the transparent woman to the
cardiac kitchen--and, of course, from dinosaur skeletons to the
animatronic T rex. Like the best of the exhibitions that it
describes, Life on Display is based in rich, scholarly research but
made thoroughly accessible by its creators' skill and the sheer
interest of what is described--it is definitely not to be
missed!"--Sharon Macdonald, University of York
"Rader and Cain weave all of these [...] threads together into a
complex and intriguing tapestry. Readers of Life on Display learn
how changes in exhibition style, informal education, the museum's
role as social advocate, and the tensions between public history
and academic study have molded some of the most venerable museums
in theUnited States." --Joyce Bedi
"Within a well-researched and meticulously referenced book, Rader
and Cain chronicle how natural history museums, science and
industry centers, and science museums evolved within the twentieth
century. Inside this interesting history of informal life displays,
the book reveals how museums reflect the social and cultural values
of their times, and often align with popular pedagogical techniques
and educational practices. . . . Life on Display not only documents
a rich history of biological display, but also details a
progression of scientific and educational practices. . . . Indeed,
the book not only offers the history of life displays in museums,
but also the history of U.S. educational foci and practices of the
1900s."-- "Science & Education"
"Wonderfully researched....We can read Life on Display as an
excellent example of history drawn from careful work in
institutional archives, but the book is also a model of ways to
move across scales and connect detailed archival work to larger
political, cultural, and economic narratives."-- "Journal of
American History"
"In lucid prose that's a real pleasure to read, Rader and Cain's
new book chronicles a revolution in modern American science
education and culture. . . . Life on Display simultaneously
develops an argument for a 'renegotiation of the relationship
between display, research, and education in American museums of
nature and science, ' and opens up an archive of fascinating (and
at times hilarious and moving) stories of members of the
museum-going public (some of who gifted dog fleas and dead pets to
their local museums), non-human inhabitants of interactive museum
displays (including an owl with a penchant for riding in cars and
'trim, up-on-their-toes cockroaches'), and museum professionals who
painted, debated, made dioramas, invented 'Exploratoria, ' and
occasionally wrote limericks. This is a book for anyone interested
in American history, museum studies, visual culture, science
studies, the history of education, grasshopper surgery, or Jurassic
Park (among many, many other fields it contributes to). It's a
wonderfully engaging history."--Carla Nappi "New Books in Science,
Technology, and Society"
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