Italian natural history museums on the verge of collapse?
نویسندگان
چکیده
The Italian natural history museums are facing a critical situation, due to the progressive loss of scientific relevance, decreasing economic investments, and scarcity of personnel. This is extremely alarming, especially for ensuring the long-term preservation of the precious collections they host. Moreover, a commitment in fieldwork to increase scientific collections and concurrent taxonomic research are rarely considered priorities, while most of the activities are addressed to public events with political payoffs, such as exhibits, didactic meetings, expositions, and talks. This is possibly due to the absence of a national museum that would have better steered research activities and overall concepts for collection management. We here propose that Italian natural history museums collaborate to instate a "metamuseum", by establishing a reciprocal interaction network aimed at sharing budgetary and technical resources, which would assure better coordination of common long-term goals and scientific activities.
منابع مشابه
[The sciences and education in museums at the close of the nineteenth century].
In the closing decades of the nineteenth century, natural history museums established solid communication networks, and their different audiences formed what became known as the 'museum movement'. It was within this context of exchange that William H. Flower made his 1889 speech on the roles natural history museums should play. The article analyzes his influence on Argentina's Museo da La Plata...
متن کاملResearch and Application of Razi Theory With Conventional Medicine in Natural Childbirth
The goal of any health system is to improve health and reduce disease, mortality and disability in society. Razi is one of the most prominent practitioners. His works, including "Al-Hawi", are considered one of the most expensive scientific heritage of Iran and the world. He was successful in producing science, innovation and expanding knowledge. He had a tremendous and wide impact on the compl...
متن کاملFederating Natural History Museums in Natural Europe
An impressive abundance of high quality scientific content about Earth’s biodiversity and natural history available in Natural History Museums (NHMs) around Europe remains largely unexploited due to a number of barriers, such as: the lack of interconnection and interoperability between the management systems used by museums, the lack of centralized access through a European point of reference l...
متن کاملErroneous quadruped walking depictions in natural history museums
Acknowledgements This work is partly based on the diploma work of Adelinda Csapó (entitled Biomechanical Analysis of Quadruped Walking Depictions, with Emphasis on Natural History Museums and Animal Anatomy Books. Eötvös University, Physical Institute, Department of Biological Physics, Budapest, 2007, in Hungarian). We thank Eleonóra Szűcs of the Hungarian Natural History Museum for picturing m...
متن کاملCivilising nature: museums and the environment
Interpreting the natural environment in the cultural context of a museum is common practice in the early 21st century. It was also quite common in the 19th century. This chapter considers some of the key discourses in natural history and science museums to reveal a rich legacy of engagement with the environment. It begins with a review of a contemporary film that portrays the wonders of the mus...
متن کامل