TY - JOUR TI - Functionless: science museums and the display of 'pure objects' AU -Jean-Francois Gauvin PY - 2016 VL - Special Issue: Science Museums and Research IS - Spring 2016 KW - Abbé Nollet KW - aesthetic form KW - instrument display KW - performative space KW - pure objects AB - I argue in this article that the tangible proximity, the sensual evocative power of things is lost in a visit to the museum. Too often the aesthetic form of the exhibition utterly destroys the objects’ core material function. One of my contentions is that we cannot think with objects we are unfamiliar with, or cannot fully grasp and manipulate. In a museum we are compelled to admire the objects’ formal and abstract ‘beauty’. They have been robbed of their function: they are functionless. I address this long-standing dichotomy between form and function. I argue that Art has undesirably become one of the chief criteria of museum exhibition design. Though artistic attributes can at times acquire epistemic value, as I will illustrate with an example taken from the French Enlightenment, modern science exhibition design tends to utterly obscure the latter in favour of the former. Science museums, I propose, need to better adapt their discourse and presentation to the research programme developed over the last thirty years in the field of science studies: the history, philosophy, and sociology of experimentation, in which instrumentation and laboratory performance play a crucial analytical role in our understanding of scientific practices. N1 - Things have become an important focus of attention and study in colleges and universities. A recent example of the evocative power of things is found in Walsh (2015). N1 - The exhibition was curated by Sophia Roosth, Stephanie Dick and James Bergman. This paragraph is partly taken from the exhibition introduction text. More information is available on the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments website: http://chsi.harvard.edu/go-ask-alice N1 - http://alice.pandorabots.com/ (accessed 10 September 2015) N1 - Geisbusch goes the extra mile, suggesting the (iconoclastic) view that such objects should be left in the hands of the museum goers even if it means its complete deteoriation: ‘perhaps…using up an object in this way is not the museum’s loss so much as the visitors’ profit’ (p 210). N1 - The authors even compare the museum to the Church, classifying it as a secular temple of the art: ‘Espace de fétichisation voué à l’élévation spirituelle du public démocratique, le musée est empreint de rites, de solennité, d’un certain climat sacral (silence, recueillement, contemplation): il s’impose comme temple laïc de l’art’ (p 21). N1 - The combination and juxtaposition of science and art is a key feature of the San Francisco Exploratorium since it was founded by Frank Oppenheimer in the late 1960s (Cole, 2009). N1 - He describes artscience this way: ‘Even more interesting to me is what happens when the aesthetic and scientific methods combine. [...] Either way, the fused method that results, at once aesthetic and scientific – intuitive and deductive, sensual and analytical, comfortable with uncertainty and able to frame a problem, embracing nature in its complexity and able to simplify to nature in its essence – is what I call artscience.’ (pp 6–7) N1 - The information is taken from the Coop Himmelb(l)au website: http://www.coop-himmelblau.at/architecture/projects/musee-des-confluences (accessed on 3 October 2015). N1 - Jean Clair is very critical of this type of ‘starchitecture’: ‘[c]es musées dans lesquels on ne pénètre pas sans un certain malaise — car là où l’on croyait trouver une présence, on ne rencontre plus qu’un vide — se sont multipliés depuis dix ou quinze ans dans le monde occidental. Seule importe l’enveloppe, que l’on voudra précieuse, impressionnante, faite de marbre, de granite, de verre et de métaux. Le contenu? Le contenu viendra plus tard ou ne viendra pas. Le monde actuel fonctionne sans contenu’ (Clair, 2007, p 136). N1 - I examine this idea in more detail in Gauvin (2012). N1 - On the cabinet and its maker, see Wess and Morton (1993). N1 - Quoted from Pyenson and Gauvin (2002, pp 119–20). The first four principles are found almost verbatim in Nollet (1738, pp 116–17). N1 - It is interesting to note that Nollet doesn’t mention the construction of globes in L’Art des expériences. N1 - One instrument, the so-called Réaumur thermometer, perhaps best symbolised the strong link between theory and practice – and the challenge such an ideal encompasses. Nollet was heavily involved in the manufacture of hundreds of these on behalf of Réaumur (Gauvin, 2012). N1 - On the importance of these artillery and engineering schools in ancien régime France see Alder (1997). A listing of the instruments (241 in all) found in the cabinet de physique at the artillery school of Bapaume, taken when the cabinet was transferred to Douay in 1773, is transcribed in Turner (2002, pp 43–46). N1 - From a memorandum written by Henry Lyons in 1922. Quoted from Boyle (2014, p 42). PB - The Science Museum Group SN - 2054-5770 LA - eng DO - 10.15180/160506 UR - https://journal.sciencemuseum.ac.uk/article/the-display-of-pure-objects/ T2 - Science Museum Group Journal