Museums Of The Future

"My object," wrote Spencer Fullerton Baird at an early date, "is to make the Smithsonian Museum eminent above all others American for the value of its fossil remains, a department in which everything remains to be done." This kind of enthusiasm applied alike to other departments, his aim being to make the Museum collections the best of their times. In addition, the founders of the Geological Survey and the Weather Bureau were greatly indebted to him for 'help and council. All in all, as his biographer and friend William H. Dall said, "no man has more greatly contributed to the promotion of science in America than Professor Baird."

Baird was succeeded as secretary by Samuel Pierpont Langley, an astronomer and physicist, and the full burden of the administration of the National Museum fell on another great American naturalist. He was George Brown Goode, who had been a student of Agassiz and whom Baird had brought to Washington in 1873 as a young ichthyologist to work with the Museum's fish collection. It was not long before the Smithsonian officials realized what a find this "assistant curator" really was. Although he lived to be only 45 years of age, he distinguished himself in two fields of scientific endeavor. He became one of the leading ichthyologists of the country, and he became probably the world's foremost authority of the time on museum administration. He wrote both popular and technical accounts of fishes, one of his most important works being the monumental "Oceanic Ichthyology" (in coauthorship with Tarleton H. Bean), a treatise on the deep-sea and pelagic fishes of the world, published by the National Museum in 1896, the year of Goode's death.

In the science of museology Goode was a pioneer and was without peer. His principles of museum administration were characterized by both practicality and foresight, and his treatises on "Museums of the Future" and "Principles of Museum Administration" are classic. Secretary Langley paid high tribute to Goode's abilities: "There was no subject in connection with the administration of the Museum to which he did not at some time or other give his personal attention. He had a quick eye for color and form, understood the art of decorating and case building, and had besides a special knowledge of subjects so widely remote from his own biologic interests that it is a question whether a new species or a new musical instrument gave him the greater pleasure.

By: davidbunch

Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com

Other articles: Career search engines Blockbuster online application Home Depot Jobs