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Philadelphia, November 2004
Hosted at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and co-sponsored by an impressive array of institutions – the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, the American Philosophical Society, Bartram’s Garden, the Huntington Library, and the Yale Center for British Art – the “Curious” symposium examined the visual culture of North American natural history and the role of drawings, specimens, and books in the trans-Atlantic exchange that was centred in Philadelphia during the 18th century and into the 19th. About 200 people from the U.S., Canada, and Britain gathered for the opportunity to discuss and learn about this fascinating topic over a long weekend, November 18–21, 2004.
The symposium included two days of papers by various historians of art, science, and material culture: Amy Meyers (Yale Center for British Art), Therese O’Malley (National Gallery of Art, Washington DC), Joel Fry (Bartram’s Garden), Mark Laird (Harvard Univ.), Margaret Pritchard (Colonial Williamsburg), Alicia Weisberg-Roberts (Courtauld Institute, London), James Green (Library Company of Philadelphia), Robert McCracken Peck (Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia), and others. The primary approach was art-historical – with some talks quite theoretical or analytical, indeed – but the presentations ranged broadly and presented much of interest for all. The papers will be published in the coming year.
Evening receptions provided an opportunity to see the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia’s massive exhibition celebrating the 200th anniversary of the Lewis & Clark expedition and the American Philosophical Society’s exhibition “Stuffing birds, pressing plants, shaping knowledge: Natural history in North America, 1730-1860”. The final event of the symposium was a tour of the historic Bartram’s Garden, home of the naturalist John Bartram and his son William Bartram, on Sunday morning.
The reception at the “Stuffing birds” exhibition provided a lovely occasion for SHNH President Joe Cain to present this year’s John Thackray Medal to Dr Sue Ann Prince, curator of the exhibition and editor of the collection of essays accompanying it. The exhibition draws together an extraordinary assemblage of historical specimens, drawings, manuscripts, books, and broadsides to explore not only the network of naturalists active in North American during the 18th century but also the processes of natural-history illustration, collection, preservation, and publication.
Meetings Secretary Gina Douglas and Bob Peck organised a dinner on the Saturday evening for members of SHNH attending the symposium. Joe Cain, Gina, former officers Tony Harvey and John Chalmers, and several others from the UK joined about 50 North American members in a very convivial gathering. Good food, good wine, and good conversation made for a delightful time for all, and several participants in a burst of enthusiasm (not just the wine, I hope) expressed an interest in organising a North American conference in the not-too-distant future.
Leslie Overstreet
Curator Natural-History Rare Books
Smithsonian Institution Libraries
North American Representative
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"Curious in our Way" had 199 registered participants on the delegates list, of which 28 were SHNH members (or had membership applications made) which equals 14%. of the total. SHNH members included a number of speakers or moderators throughout the sessions.
Approximately 50 people, being SHNH members, and friends, met after the last formal session, on the evening of Saturday 20th November for dinner at the Bistro St Tropez on the 4th floor of 2400 Market St, with a spectacular night view of the Schuylkill River. We are most grateful to Bob Peck for arranging this.
On Sunday morning we had a marvellous tour of the Historic Bartram's Garden where the curator, Joel Fry, and his colleagues, provided expert guidance and access to some of their treasured archives,
Gina Douglas
Meetings Secretary
About 100 delegates were present at the American Philosophical Society’s exhibition, “Stuffing birds, pressing plants, shaping knowledge: Natural history in North America, 1730-1860”. This was a large crowd and there were "ooohs" and "ahhhs" aplenty. It was a perfect place for a group like us to meet, the catering was delicious and Dr Sue Anne Prince gathered everyone together on the second floor for a formal welcome. After this I presented her with the 2004 Thackray Medal, awarded for the exhibition, which she gracefully accepted on behalf of the American Philosophical Society. All in all, a delightful occasion.
There's a photo of the presentation on-line.
Joe Cain
President
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Abstracts for most of the papers given at this conference are available on-line: please click on the relevant link below.
D. Allen : Missing collections of British and Irish vascular plants.
E. Borgo , M.10/4/07es due to the 1992 flood on a natural history collection.
P. J. Boylan : International cultural property law and the protection of natural history collections.
S. Chaplin : Museums of The Royal College of Surgeons of England – recovering John Hunter's missing museum.
J. Edwards : The Jardin d’Acclimatisation, Paris.
F. Egmond : Collecting natural history on paper: some little known sixteenth-century Dutch manuscripts depicting and describing marine life.
C. Fisher : Headless thickheads and wandering weebongs : the limbo birds
P. Foster : Gilbert White (1720–1793) and the lost Gibraltar collection of John White (1727–1780).
J. P. Hume : The dodo and other Mauritian fauna, found and lost again.
J. Kiser : Hamilton L. Smith's Diatomacearum Species Typicae and his lost microscopical library.
V. Kisling : Extinct zoos: what happened to the animal collections?
S. Knell: Collection loss, cultural change and the second law of thermodynamics.
H. W. Lack : The Dahlem catastrophe.
J. van der Land and J. Krikken : Writing and rewriting the history of natural history in Leiden. [no abstract available]
A. MacGregor : Natural history collections in the Ashmolean, seventeenth to nineteenth century.
M. Masseti : A lost collection of bird and mammals from northern Syria (1989-1994).
Marco Masseti : Homeless carnivores (Mammalia: Canidae, Mustelidae, Felidae) from the Aegean islands in the Greek museums.
Marco Masseti: The lost cranes of the island of Lampedusa, in the Sicilian Channel, Italy.
P. Morris : Lost, found and still looking – tracing some examples of early taxidermy.
R. Prys-Jones : The bird collections of Richard Meinertzhagen: fraud, its detection and some happy endings.
H. Reichenbach : Lost zoos: the decline and disappearance of zoological gardens.
C. Riedl-Dorn : Displaced documents (treasures) – the strange fate of archive materials (collections) and drawings of the Vienna Natural History Museum.
C. Rovati, F. Barbagli, S. Maretti, S. Santamaria, T. Viezzoli and C. Violani : The Natural History Museum of Pavia University: salvaging and studying of historical collections after years of neglect.
W. Conner Sorensen : Nineteenth century American entomological collections: a success story with exceptions.
V. Stagl : The unknown manuscript of Polydore Roux (1732-1833) in the Crustacean collection of the Natural History Museum in Vienna.
C. Violani : The lost bird collection of C. S. Rafinesque: sunk in the Atlantic Ocean.
C. Violani and E. Borgo : Pitta bertae, Salvadori 1868, an enigmatic unique bird type lost in the mail.
S. Walker :The Indian Natural History Project and the menagerie at Barrackpore (1803-1878).
S. Walker : Description and drawings of selected quadrupeds of the Indian Natural History Project, Barrackpore.
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