Culture and Class in English Public Museums, 1850-1914 [Lingua Inglese]

187 Pages·2005·19.274 MB·English

by  Kate Hill

Culture and Class in English
Public Museums, 1850-1914
Historical Urban Studies
Series editors: Richard Rodger and Jean-Luc Pinol
Titles in this series include:
The Market and the City
Square, Street and Architecture in Early Modern Europe
Donatella Calabi
Cities of Ideas: Civil Society and Urban Governance in Britain 1800—2000
Essays in Honour of David Reeder
edited by Robert Colls and Richard Rodger
Young People and the European City
Age Relations in Nottingham and Saint-Étienne, 1890-1940
David M. Pomfret
Municipal Services and Employees in the Modern City
New Historic Approaches
edited by Michèle Dagenais, Irene Maver and Pierre-Yves Saunier
The City and the Railway in Europe
edited by Ralf Roth and Marie-Noëlle Polino
The Representation of Place
Urban Planning and Protest in France and Great Britain, 1950-1980
Michael James Miller
Printed Matters
Printing, Publishing and Urban Culture in Europe in the Modern Period
edited by Malcolm Gee and Tim Kirk
Identities in Space
Contested Terrains in the Western City Since 1850
edited by Simon Gunn and Robert J. Morris
Body and City
Histories of Urban Public Health
edited by Sally Sheard and Helen Power
Culture and Class in English
Public Museums, 1850-1914
KATE HILL
First published 2005 by Ashgate Publishing
Published 2016 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon 0X14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Copyright © Kate Hill 2005
The author has asserted her moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be
identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form
or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for
identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Hill, Kate
Culture and class in public museums, 1850-1914. - (Historical urban studies)
1. Museums - Great Britain - History - 19th century 2. Museums - Great Britain -
History - 20th century 3. Class consciousness - Great Britain - History - 19th century
4. Class consciousness - Great Britain - History - 20th century 5. Social classess -
Great Britain - History - 19th century 6. Social classes - Great Britain - History - 20th
century 7. Civic improvement - Great Britain /0 Hisoty - 19th century 8. Civic
improvement - Great Britain - History - 20th century
I. Title
069'.0941*09034
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hill, Kate, 1969-
Culture and class in English public museums, 1850-1914 / Kate Hill.
p. cm. - (Historical urban studies series)
Includes bibliographical references (p.) and index.
ISBN 0-7546-0432-2
1. Museums - England - History. 2. Social classes - England. 3. Cultural property -
Protection - England. 4. Cities and towns - Study and teaching - Great Britain. 5. Great
Britain - Cultural policy - History - 19th century. 6. Great Britain - Cultural policy -
History - 20th century. 7. Great Britain - History - 19th century. 8. Great Britain -
History - 20th century. I. Title. II. Series
AM42.E54H55 2005
069'.0941-dc22
2004060766
ISBN 13: 978-0-7546-0432-7 (hbk)
For David

Contents
List of Figures viii
General Editors ’ Preface ix
Acknowledgements xi
1 Introduction: Interpreting Museums 1
2 Negotiating the New Urban Environment 20
3 The Public Museum in the Nineteenth Century 36
4 The Social Characteristics of Municipal Museums 53
5 Reading the Objects 69
6 Decoding the Displays and Layout 90
7 Consuming the Museum: Museum Visitors 125
8 Conclusion 143
Bibliography 152
Index 169
List of Figures
6.1 Ground Plan of Liverpool Museum in 1869 93
6.2 Spatial Diagram of Liverpool Museum in 1869 94
6.3 Ground Plan of Liverpool Museum in 1906 95
6.4 Ground Plan of Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston, 1932 96
6.5 Spatial Diagram of Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston 97
6.6 The Industrial Gallery, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery 98
6.7 Edward M. Gibbs, Sketch for Museum in Weston Park, 1874 99
6.8 Ground Plan of Mappin Art Gallery, Sheffield, 1887 101
6.9 Spatial Diagram of Mappin Art Gallery, Sheffield 101
6.10 Ground Plan of Leicester Museum, 1904 102
6.11 Diagram of a Display Case, Liverpool Museum, 1873 105
6.12 Natural History Displays at Liverpool Museum, c. 1906 109
6.13 Natural History Displays at Harris Museum and Art Gallery, 1896 112
6.14 The Egyptian Hall, Liverpool Museum, c. 1906 116
6.15 Classical Casts at the Harris Museum and Art Gallery, 1896 119
Historical Urban Studies
General Editors’ Preface
Density and proximity are two of the defining characteristics of the urban
dimension. It is these that identify a place as uniquely urban, though the threshold
for such pressure points varies from place to place. What is considered an
important cluster in one context - may not be considered as urban elsewhere. A
third defining characteristic is functionality - the commercial or strategic position
of a town or city which conveys an advantage over other places. Over time, these
functional advantages may diminish, or the balance of advantage may change
within a hierarchy of towns. To understand how the relative importance of towns
shifts over time and space is to grasp a set of relationships which is fundamental to
the study of urban history.
Towns and cities are products of history, yet have themselves helped to shape
history. As the proportion of urban dwellers has increased, so the urban dimension
has proved a legitimate unit of analysis through which to understand the spectrum
of human experience and to explore the cumulative memory of past generations.
Though obscured by layers of economic, social and political change, the study of
the urban milieu provides insights into the functioning of human relationships and,
if urban historians themselves are not directly concerned with current policy
studies, few contemporary concerns can be understood without reference to the
historical development of towns and cities.
This longer historical perspective is essential to an understanding of social
processes. Crime, housing conditions and property values, health and education,
discrimination and deviance, and the formulation of regulations and social policies
to deal with them were, and remain, amongst the perennial preoccupations of
towns and cities - no historical period has a monopoly of these concerns. They
recur in successive generations, albeit in varying mixtures and strengths; the details
may differ
The central forces of class, power and authority in the city remain. If this was
the case for different periods, so it was for different geographical entities and
cultures. Both scientific knowledge and technical information were available
across Europe and showed little respect for frontiers. Yet despite common concerns
and access to broadly similar knowledge, different solutions to urban problems
were proposed and adopted by towns and cities in different parts of Europe. This
comparative dimension informs urban historians as to which were systematic
factors and which were of a purely local nature: general and particular forces can
be distinguished.