Great museums of Victorian Britain Archived article from Feb 9, 2001 By Alice Roche Cody   While on break from graduate school, Carla Yanni decided to pay a visit to the Natural History Museum in London. She was instantly dazzled. Every aspect of the huge museum's architecture fascinated her; she knew immediately that her art history studies would incorporate this magnificent building. "It was partly intellectual and partly romantic -- I loved the building, and I wanted to know everything about it," recalls Yanni, an assistant professor of art history at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences-New Brunswick. She was struck by the museum's churchlike construction: a tall interior space with chapel-like alcoves. The cream-colored walls accented with blue and the terra-cotta designs of dodo birds, pterodactyls and saber-toothed cats captivated her. She lingered in galleries that showed hundreds of butterflies and dozens of stuffed finches. Carla Yanni was struck by the way museum architecture reflects society's understanding of the natural world Photo by Nick Romanenko "The museum was built during the Victorian era. It is an evocative, complicated building with a complex plan. I said to myself, 'I have to write my dissertation on this building.'" And she did. That dissertation, completed at the University of Pennsylvania, eventually evolved into her recently released book, "Nature's Museums: Victorian Science and the Architecture of Display" (The Johns Hopkins University Press). By delving into both the history of architecture and the history of science, Yanni details the planning and design of three great Victorian museums: the Oxford University Museum, the Edinburgh Museum of Science and Art (now the Royal Museum of Scotland) and the Natural History Museum of London. The allure of these buildings, however, wasn't solely romantic. Before visiting London, Yanni had been pondering the meaning of nature in 19th-century architecture. As she delved into the discussion surrounding the building of England's great museums, she realized that directors and governing boards tended tofall into two main camps in their approach to the natural world: those working from a religious framework saw nature as God's creation; those taking a more scientific stance viewed nature as a resource dominated by man. In a detailed examination of the progression of each museum from initial design to completion, Yanni demonstrates how the construction of each building was influenced by these differing perceptions. Her research took her to libraries and archives around Britain, where she searched through architectural papers and drawings, minutes from building-committee meetings and stories from local newspapers. The Natural History Museum The Natural History Museum, which opened in 1881, generated some of the most heated debates. That building, Yanni says, became a point of contention between the religious and scientific approaches to nature. "The central hall and nave were churchlike, and the twin towers evoked the feeling of a medieval church," she observes. "The popular newspapers hailed the museum as a temple to nature and talked about the museum as 'God's second book.' They said that displaying Adam in the peak of the gable was appropriate." Yet the secular evolutionist T.H. Huxley and other professional scientists objected to this religious view of the museum, says Yanni. In fact, she adds, the journal Nature, a major scientific publication, called its semi-ecclesiastical style a mistake. "Scientists wanted to separate the study of science from what was once called 'natural theology,'" she says. "They wanted to rout out superstition and make science a free search for the truth." Yanni points out that the London museum was, in many ways, an imperial institution, displaying a wealth of items gathered from the farthest reaches of the British domain. "Travelers sent bones and artifacts that represented the breadth of the British Empire through nature," she notes. "The collections represented the expanse of the colonies." The Oxford University Museum The Oxford University Museum, considerably smaller, has attracted the most attention from architectural historians. The purpose of Oxford University in the 19th century was to train clerics, and the explicit aim of the Oxford museum, commissioned in the 1850s, was to help students and visitors study the natural world so they could better understand God's greatness. "The new science edifice at Oxford should be regarded not as a secular institution, but as one with quasi-religious goals rooted in natural theology," Yanni writes. "The museum was meant to be a place where students could contemplate authentic physical wonders of Nature and the greatness of godly design." Yanni details the patrons' debate over the design of the Oxford building, with the Gothic style finally triumphing over the classical. One issue during construction was the courtyard's glass roof. To support the weight of the elaborate wrought-iron and glass skylight, cast-iron columns had to be used. "The delegates had asked for an iron and glass roof to cover the courtyard because they sought perfect natural light, but received an expensive interior that has captured the imagination of later historians because it joined the Gothic style to a new technology," she writes. Inside, the iron capitals were elaborately decorated with leaves, fruits and flowers to highlight the complexities found in nature. Varieties depicted include lime, chestnut, sycamore, water lily, passionflower and holly. As in many medieval churches, all were drawn from close observations of the natural world, Yanni says. The Edinburgh Museum of Science and Art Although the Edinburgh Museum of Science and Art and the Oxford University Museum were both designed in the 1850s and are of similar size, the Edinburgh museum offers an entirely opposite view of natural history. "Rather than the second book of God, this 'nature' was more practical and economically valuable than it was a reflection of the diversity of Creation," writes Yanni. While the Oxford museum served an elite, religious clientele, the Edinburgh museum served the wider public. The design fit the pragmatic spirit of the Scots, whose goal was to create an accessible museum that would teach the public about trade and economics, she says. Designed by Francis Fowke, the museum was modeled after the Crystal Palace, a bright and airy greenhouselike building that housed the Great Exhibition of the Industry of all Nations in 1851. The exhibit, hailed as a monument to consumption, sought to stimulate the economy and show middle-class families that spending money was morally uplifting, says Yanni. Items such as porcelain cups and silk pillowcases were displayed in natural light. Newspapers at the time called for museums to follow the Crystal Palace's example to "instruct visitors on the state of industry and inspire manufacturers and workers to invest money in labour and in the economy," she writes. The Edinburgh museum, consequently, portrays nature as a resource ripe for exploitation by an expanding empire. "It's interesting that a similar design was rejected for the Natural History Museum in London because it looked too much like a bazaar with its connections to trade and commerce," she points out. While we like to think that today's natural history museums offer a neutral exhibit space for factual displays, they, too, reflect the public's view of the world, Yanni maintains. "Because museums are usually meant to be public and are vessels of all that society deems to be important, they capture the values of society at any given time. Museum architecture, whether Victorian or 21st-century, is always influenced by political, social and cultural biases."

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