HebrideanUltraTerfHecate on Nostr: https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/02/12/the-queering-of-the-science-museum/ Sadly, ...
https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/02/12/the-queering-of-the-science-museum/
Sadly, if you have visited the Science Museum recently you will not have been surprised at all by the Lego story. The museum has gone massively downhill in recent years. During my last visit in December, I was truly shocked at just how drab it had become. There is nothing visually or intellectually compelling about its permanent collection, which is seemingly a series of disparate objects plonked together. There is no real storytelling to link them or engage visitors. I did at first wonder if this might just be down to unimaginative curation. Then, while walking through the museum’s exhibition about 18th-century clockmaking, my suspicions were aroused that something else was going on. These immaculately preserved timepieces are beautiful and intricate, wonders of the Enlightenment era that produced them. But the blurbs accompanying the displays make repeated references to colonialism and slavery in the period – hardly relevant to an exhibition about clocks made by artisan craftsmen.
Another striking thing about the Science Museum is how absent the great men of science – like Newton, Darwin and Turing – are. Though many of the objects associated with their scientific discoveries are well represented, the eccentric and interesting lives of these fascinating men are almost wholly absent. Is this perhaps because of a reluctance to tell the story of ‘dead white men’ and their place in scientific history?
I got the same feeling with many of the objects in the museum preserved from the Industrial Revolution, another incredible period of human progress. They are presented with almost no story, beyond their mechanistic purpose. They are completely robbed of all humanness and larger context. Is this because of the now fashionable view among zealous climate activists like Greta Thunberg that the fossil-fueled Industrial Revolution is something Britain should be ashamed of? The Science Museum has been attacked in the past for accepting sponsorships from oil and gas companies, and so may be extra touchy about the subject.
Sadly, if you have visited the Science Museum recently you will not have been surprised at all by the Lego story. The museum has gone massively downhill in recent years. During my last visit in December, I was truly shocked at just how drab it had become. There is nothing visually or intellectually compelling about its permanent collection, which is seemingly a series of disparate objects plonked together. There is no real storytelling to link them or engage visitors. I did at first wonder if this might just be down to unimaginative curation. Then, while walking through the museum’s exhibition about 18th-century clockmaking, my suspicions were aroused that something else was going on. These immaculately preserved timepieces are beautiful and intricate, wonders of the Enlightenment era that produced them. But the blurbs accompanying the displays make repeated references to colonialism and slavery in the period – hardly relevant to an exhibition about clocks made by artisan craftsmen.
Another striking thing about the Science Museum is how absent the great men of science – like Newton, Darwin and Turing – are. Though many of the objects associated with their scientific discoveries are well represented, the eccentric and interesting lives of these fascinating men are almost wholly absent. Is this perhaps because of a reluctance to tell the story of ‘dead white men’ and their place in scientific history?
I got the same feeling with many of the objects in the museum preserved from the Industrial Revolution, another incredible period of human progress. They are presented with almost no story, beyond their mechanistic purpose. They are completely robbed of all humanness and larger context. Is this because of the now fashionable view among zealous climate activists like Greta Thunberg that the fossil-fueled Industrial Revolution is something Britain should be ashamed of? The Science Museum has been attacked in the past for accepting sponsorships from oil and gas companies, and so may be extra touchy about the subject.