The Shaping of Latin American Museums of Natural History, 1850-1990

Abstract

This essay reflects upon the milieu and the character of Brazilian and Argentinean natural history museums during the second half of the nineteenth century. It argues that the museums were influenced not only by European and North American museums but by each other. Museum directors in the two countries knew each other and interacted. Some of the relationships between these museums were friendly and cooperative, but because they were in young, emerging nations, they also became deeply involved in the invention of nationality in their respective countries and interacted as rivals and competitors. Even through rivalry, however, they contributed to each other's development, as did rivalry among museums within each of the two countries. Later in the century they went well beyond the nationalist perspective, finding, through their research into paleontology and anthropology in their regions, a continental and uniquely South American scientific perspective, defined in reaction to North American and European views.

La pesca comercial y el estudio de la fauna marina en la Argentina, 1890-1930

“…In Berg's case, his interest in ichthyology and some marine invertebrates seems to have begun during his stay in Montevideo between 1890 and 1892 while he was running the National Museum of Natural History (Museo Nacional de Historia Natural) in that city (Lopes, Podgorny, 2000a, 2000b. It should be remembered that this naturalist had arrived in Argentina in 1873, summoned to work at the Buenos Aires Museum (Museo de Buenos Aires), where he would stay for three years, later working as a teacher at the National School (Colegio Nacional) and at the University of Buenos Aires (Universidad de Buenos Aires) (Gallardo, 1902).…”

Becoming a Biologist in Colonial Korea: Cultural Nationalism in a Teacher-Cum-Biologist

“…It is no wonder that the first Western sciences to take hold in colonized nations were largely descriptive rather than precisely quantitative. 10 Most of the institutes established early on were dedicated to natural history, biology, and geology, and in many cases local experience with fieldwork seems to have cultivated nationalism (Lopes and Podgorny 2000;Wang 2002;Shen 2009). Basically, research could be just as unique and peculiar to a place as the indigenous animals and plants being studied.…”

“Faces Drawn in the Sand”: A Rescue Project of Native Peoples' Photographs Stored at the Museum of La Plata, Argentina

“…Most of it was taken at the 1883 Colonial Exposition in Amsterdam, at the Paris World's Fair of 1889, and temporary exhibitions held in Paris, Berlin and London during 1883 and 1884 (Jehel 1994-1995, Maxwell 2000). Following anthropological instructions of Paul Pierre Broca (1824-1880), Bonaparte's main aim was to record anthropological "types" in order to be printed and dis-tributed in portfolios among researchers and institutions around the world (Jehel 1994-1995, Timby 1996, Edwards 1992, 2001, 2007. There is no certainty about the exact date the original photographs forming this collection were taken, although several cards were produced in the studio of the Bolivian photographer Natalio Bernal, who was established on La Paz by the 1860s (Buck 1996), and in one of the cartes de visite (EAP207/ CDV/001/0014) a signature reads: "Julio 9/77" (July 9/77).…”