Article ID: CBB001200286

Shaping, Collecting and Displaying Medicine and Architecture: A Comparison of the Hunterian and Soane Museums (2013)

unapi

Collections played a critical role as teaching tools for particular disciplinary doctrines in Enlightenment Britain, including medicine and architecture. The two protagonists examined here are the architect Sir John Soane and surgeon John Hunter, whose museums now face one another across Lincoln's Inn Fields in central London. Skeletons, body parts and artistic models illustrated and explained the workings of the body, while architectural pieces and casts, together with interior design and furnishings, supplied inspiration for architects. These collections dissect, respectively, bodies and buildings in order to build new schools of thought. Hunter's and Soane's original house museums were both designed to promote particular disciplinary practices and to impress polite society, through various kinds of representations and methods. They differ, however, in the use of the classical tradition. Hunter strode forwards, leaving this legacy behind, while Soane stood Janus-like, interweaving past and present into a multi-layered narrative.

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Authors & Contributors
Chaplin, Simon
Lothar A. Beck
Lesser, Thomas A.
Davey, Colin
Roosevelt, Kermit, III
Wallis, Peter
Concepts
Museums
Natural history
Collectors and collecting
Societies; institutions; academies
Science and society
Medicine
Time Periods
18th century
19th century
20th century, early
20th century
17th century
Enlightenment
Places
Great Britain
England
United States
Bath (England)
Peru
Tokyo (Japan)
Institutions
American Museum of Natural History
Naturhistoriska riksmuseet
Royal Society of London
British Museum. Natural History
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