Learning to see in New Brunswick, 1862-1929

Canadian Historical Review

Volumn 87, Issue 4, 2006, Pages 553-581

  McTavish, Lianne ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NEW BRUNSWICK   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60950261317     PISSN: 00083755     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.3138/CHR/87.4.553     Document Type: Review

References (120)

1. Hal Foster, 'Preface,' in Vision and Visuality, ed. Hal Foster (Seattle: Bay, 1988), ix
2. Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990)
3. See also his Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle, and Modern Culture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999)
4. For a critique of Crary's account of early modern vision, see David Summers, 'Suspension of Perception (Book Review),' Art Bulletin 83, no. 1 (March 2001): 57-61
5. For studies that extend Crary's analysis, see Peter John Brownlee, '"The Economy of the Eyes": Vision and the Cultural Production of the Market Revolution, 1800-1860' (PhD diss., George Washington University, 2004)
6. and Elizabeth Ann Wiatr, 'Seeing American: Visual Education and the Making of Modern Observers, 1900-1935' (PhD diss., University of California, Irvine, 2003)
7. For some of the burgeoning literature on visuality, see Teresa Brennan and Martin Jay, eds., Vision in Context: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Sight (New York: Routledge, 1996)
8. Craig Clunas, Pictures and Visuality in Early Modern China (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997)
9. and Robert S. Nelson, ed., Visuality before and beyond the Renaissance: Seeing as Others Saw (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997)
10. Tony Bennett, The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics (New York: Routledge, 1995), 61
11. Ruth Phillips, Trading Identities: The Souvenir in Native North American Art from the Northeast, 1700-1900 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1998), 69
12. See, for example, the official website of the New Brunswick Museum: www.gnb.ca/0130/english/00aa.html. For Gesner, see Allison Mitcham, Prophet of the Wilderness: Abraham Gesner (Hantsport, NS: Lancelot, 1995)
13. Austin Squires, The History and Development of the New Brunswick Museum (Saint John: The New Brunswick Museum, 1945). The Natural History Society (NHS) was revived during the 1940s, and located in Fredericton under different leadership
14. See, for example, Brian Young, The Making and Unmaking of a University Museum: The McCord, 1921-1996 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2000), 123
15. and Timothy Luke, Museum Politics: Power Plays at the Exhibition (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), 15-16
16. Though Aboriginal peoples are rarely discussed, their objects were collected by members of the NHS, especially after 1906. One reference to Acadians is made by Hay in the Bulletin of the Natural History Society of New Brunswick 2 (1883): 26, where he comments that an Acadian guide is a keen observer of nature, but could not 'advance the material prosperity of a country.'
17. Crary, Techniques of the Observer, 5 (italics in the original)
18. The use of the magic lantern is noted in the Minutes of the Council of the NHS, 1862-1901, 1 December 1896, F37, S108, NHS fonds, Archives of the New Brunswick Museum (hereafter cited as ANBM)
19. NHS General Minutes, 1862-90, 29 January 1862, F40, S127, NHS fonds, ANBM
20. LeBaron Botsford, 'Historical Sketch of the Natural History Society,' Bulletin of the Natural History Society of New Brunswick 7 (1888): 5
21. See, for example, Joy Kenseth, '"A World of Wonders in One Closet Shut,"' in The Age of the Marvelous, ed. Joy Kenseth (Hanover, NH: Hood Museum of Art, 1991), 81-101
22. Minutes of the Council of the NHS, 1862-1901, 23 February 1899, F37, S108, NHS fonds, ANBM
23. William MacIntosh, 'Curator's Report,' Bulletin of the Natural History Society of New Brunswick 27 (1909): 153
24. For an analysis of dioramas, see Donna Haraway, 'Teddy Bear Patriarchy: Taxidermy in the Garden of Eden, New York City, 1908-1986,' in Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science (New York: Routledge, 1989), 26-58
25. For a description of the scientific approach to nature inspired by Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626), see W.A. Waiser, The Field Naturalist: John Macoun, the Geological Survey, and Natural Science (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989), 10
26. and Suzanne Zeller, 'George Lawson: Victorian Botany, the Origin of the Species and the Case of Nova Scotian Heather,' in Profiles of Science and Society in the Maritimes Prior to 1914 ed. Paul A. Bogaard (Fredericton, NB: Acadiensis, 1990), 53-4
27. Cited in Waiser, The Field Naturalist, 7
28. Steven Conn, Museums and American Intellectual Life, 1876-1926 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 32-73
29. Mary P. Winsor, Reading the Shape of Nature: Comparative Zoology at the Agassiz Museum (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 12-14
30. Members of the society occasionally sent specimens to Harvard to be identified by Agassiz. See letter from Agassiz, 3 June 1868, F1, S127, ANBM
31. Annual Report of 1863, NHS Scrapbook, 1862-1896, F120, S129, NHS fonds, ANBM. See George F. Matthew, 'Charles Frederick Hartt,' Bulletin of the Natural History Society of New Brunswick 9 (1890): 1-18, for a biography
32. Minutes of the Council of the NHS, 1862-1901, 6 March 1894, F37, S108, NHS fonds, ANBM. NHS Scrapbook, 20 August 1896, F121, S129, NHS fonds, ANBM, notes that a teacher, Miss M.E.S. Leat, was presented with bamboo, ores, and fossils for use in her school
33. 'Natural History Society to Lend Collections to Schools,' Daily Telegraph, 11 May 1907, 10
34. Museum School Service CB, ANBM, uncatalogued and undated boxes kindly supplied by archivists
35. Squires, The History and Development of the New Brunswick Museum
36. Progress Report sent by William MacIntosh to H.O. McCurry, 17 May 1937, RG 7.4C, box 294, F1, Outside Activities/Organizations, Carnegie Corporation C New Brunswick, New Brunswick Museum, Saint John, 1933-1939, National Gallery of Canada Library and Archives (hereafter cited as NGCLA)
37. Charles Sanders Peirce, Collected Papers, ed. Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1931-1935), 4:87
38. Statistical Report, 11 October 1934, F53, S128, NHS fonds, ANBM. The Carnegie Corporation of New York awarded $9,000, payable $3,000 annually for three years beginning in 1934, primarily toward the support of educational programs
39. MacIntosh sent the life history of the polyphemus moth to a teacher in Clark's Corner, Queens County, New Brunswick. Letter from William MacIntosh, 10 April 1911, F60, S128, NHS fonds, ANBM. For his description of Reiker mounts, see General Minute Book of the NHS, 1912-1920, 20 October 1914, F42, S127, NHS fonds, ANBM
40. For a sample lesson on beetles, see the file at the NGCLA as per note 29. A few lessons survive because MacIntosh sent them to NGC Director H.O. McCurry, then secretary of the Canadian Museums Committee of the Carnegie Corporation
41. William MacIntosh, 'Injurious and Other Insects of New Brunswick,' Report on Agriculture for the Province of New Brunswick (Fredericton: Department of Agriculture, 1913), 268-71
42. For a biography of George U. Hay, see the website of the Archival Collections of the ANBM: www.gnb.ca/0130/english/00aa.html
43. George U. Hay, Lecture 3, 'A Study of the Environment of Plants,' n.d., F92, S128, NHS fonds, ANBM, 21-2
44. Alexander H. McKay, 'Ferndale School,' Educational Review 1, no. 1 (June 1887): 1
45. 'Ferndale School, No. 3, Olisiocampa,' Educational Review 1, no. 3 (August 1887): 51-3. For another natural history drawing lesson, see 'Ferndale School
46. Matthew, 'Charles Frederick Hartt,' 3
47. George U. Hay, Lecture 2, 'Plant Life,' 19 July 1888, F90, S128, NHS fonds, ANBM, 5
48. E. Thring, "Thinking in Shape and Pictorial Teaching,' Educational Review 1, no. 2 (July 1887): 37
49. 'Art Studies and Drawing in Schools,' Educational Review 11, no. 7 (December 1897): III
50. A short, untitled article contends, 'Only a few lines of chalk, and from the black surface there rises in apparent relief, a winged butterfly,' in Educational Review 1, no. 8 (January 1888): 146
51. Clive Ashwin, 'Pestalozzi and the Origins of Pedagogical Drawing,' British Journal of Educational Studies 29, no. 2 (June 1981): 138-51
52. Kate Silber, Pestalozzi: The Man and His Work (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976), 119-50
53. Cited in Ashwin, 'Pestalozzi and the Origins of Pedagogical Drawing,' 148
54. Katherine F.C. MacNaughton, The Development of the Theory and Practice of Education in New Brunswick 1784-1900 (Fredericton, NB: University of New Brunswick Historical Studies, 1947), 110-11
55. Cited in Ashwin, 'Pestalozzi and the Origins of Pedagogical Drawing,' 140
56. Suzanne Zeller, Land of Promise, Promised Land: The Culture of Victorian Science in Canada (Ottawa: Canadian Historical Association, 1996)
57. Suzanne Zeller, Inventing Canada: Early Victorian Science and the Idea of a Transcontinental Nation (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987), 49
58. Report of the Ornithology Committee, 19 October 1909, NHS General Minutes, 1890-1911, F41, S108, NHS fonds, ANBM. See also the entry of 2 April 1907, where 'so called sportsmen' are condemned for causing the extinction of shore birds
59. Richard W. Judd, Common Lands, Common People: The Origins of Conservation in Northern New England (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 6-7
60. For discussions of the construction of a provincial park, see NHS General Minutes, 1890-1911, 5 March 1901, F41, S108, NHS fonds, ANBM. For the creosoting plant, see Israel Tarte, Office of the Minister of Public Works, to the Natural History Society, 7 September 1896, NHS Scrapbook, 1893-98, F121, S129, NHS fonds, ANBM; and letter to Senator Ellis from the Natural History Society, 20 February 1897, NHS Scrapbook, 1893-98, F121, S129, NHS fonds, ANBM
61. For the dispute between Muir and Giffard, see Robert W. Righter, The Battle over Hetch Hetchy: America's Most Controversial Dam and the Birth of Modern Environmentalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005)
62. The undated lesson on tea was sent by MacIntosh to McCurry, as per note. 29. Red Rose Tea was founded by Theodore Estabrooks in 1861, and sold by him in 1932
63. David J. Rhees, 'Corporate Advertising, Public Relations, and Popular Exhibits: The Case of DuPont,' Industrial Society and Its Museums, 1890-1990: Social Aspirations and Cultural Politics, ed. Brigitte Schroeder-Gudehus (Paris: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1993), 67-75
64. One lengthy letter published submitted to Saint John's Telegraph, March 1907, argued that the NHS promoted 'educational and other useful purposes,' See a bound booklet containing newspaper clipping related to the NHS, F117, S128A, NHS fonds, ANBM. In 'NHS to Lend Collection to Schools,' Daily Telegraph, 11 May 1907, MacIntosh argued that a collection of game and fur-bearing animals was of great value to tourists and sportsmen. NHS Council Minutes, 1901-1920, 18 February 1915, F38, S127, NHS fonds, ANBM, affirms the NHS will 'continue to admit the public free to its museum every week day from 2 to 5 o'clock.'
65. NHS General Minutes, 1862-90, 21 January 1896, F40, S127, NHS fonds, ANBM
66. Samuel Kain, 'Secretary's Report,' Bulletin of the Natural History Society of New Brunswick 17 (1899): 176
67. and NHS General Minutes, 1912-1920, 17 October 1916, F42, S127, NHS fonds, ANBM
68. A lesson on linoleum is preserved at the National Gallery of Canada, as per note 29. MacIntosh noted the display of economic woods of New Brunswick within the Museum of the NHS in the NHS General Minutes, 1912-1920, 20 October 1914, F42, S127, NHS fonds, ANBM
69. Letter 46, 12 March 1907, F2, S127, NHS fonds, ANBM; letter 3, 2 April 1910, F7, S127, NHS fonds, ANBM; letter 25, November 1911, F2, S127, NHS fonds, ANBM. See the many letters sent to MacIntosh in F7-F10, S127, NHS fonds, ANBM
70. NHS General Minutes, 1912-1920, 20 October 1914, F42, S127, NHS fonds, ANBM
71. MacIntosh, 'Injurious and Other Insects of New Brunswick,' 269
72. 'Ferndale School, No. 2, A Beetle,' Educational Review 1, no. 2 (July 1887): 26-8
73. Timothy Lewis, 'Agrarian Idealism and Progressive Agriculture in Maritime Canada: Agricultural Leadership in New Brunswick, 1895-1929' (PhD diss., University of New Brunswick, 2003)
74. T.W. Acheson, "The National Policy and the Industrialization of the Maritimes, 1880-1910,' Acadiensis 1, no. 2 (Spring 1972): 6
75. Patricia A. Thornton, 'The Problem of Out-Migration from Atlantic Canada, 1871-1921: A New Look,' Acadiensis 15, no. 1 (Autumn 1985): 20
76. R.P. Steeves, Nature Study and Agricultural Course: For Use in the Public Schools of New Brunswick (Fredericton, NB: Department of Education, 1914), 24
77. J.V., 'Nature Study,' Educational Review 16, no. 5 (1902): 87, also discusses teaching children to appreciate the beauty of landscape
78. Hay and Matthew described the summer camp held at Bocabec, Charlotte County, in August 1883, with seventeen members in attendance. NHS General Minutes, 186-90, 4 September 1883, F40, S127, NHS fonds, ANBM. Ganong wished to renew the summer camps in 1885: Minutes of the Council of the NHS, 1862-1901, 31 March 1885, F37, S108, NHS fonds, ANBM
79. In 1881, the NHS resolved to create an Associate class of membership for women, available for a fee of one dollar per year. Women would be allowed to participate in all public business of the NHS, but not its council. Minutes of the Council of the NHS, 1862-1901, 9 May 1881, F37, S108, NHS fonds, ANBM. The Junior Society for boys between twelve and eighteen years of age was described as 'revived' in 1885: Minutes of the Council of the NHS, 1862-1901, 3 May 1885, F37, S108, NHS fonds, ANBM. The first mention of the Junior Associate Branch for girls aged ten to twenty-one occurs in the annual report in the Bulletin of the Natural History Society of New Brunswick 27 (1909): 149
80. NHS General Minutes, 1890-1911, 19 October 1909, F41, S108, NHS fonds, ANBM
81. David Matless, 'Visual Culture and Geographical Citizenship: England in the 1940s,' Journal of Historical Geography 22, no. 4 (1996): 425
82. For discussions of the links between natural history and nationalism, see R. Dunlap, Nature and the English Diaspora: Environment and History in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 26
83. Curtis M. Hinsley, '"Magnificent Intentions": Washington, DC, and American Anthopology in 1846,' in Museum Studies: An Anthology of Contexts, ed. Bettina Messias Carbonell (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004), 163
84. and Zeller, Inventing Canada, 34
85. Carl Berger, Science, God, and Nature in Victorian Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1983), xiii, 10, 17, 31-2, 45
86. In addition to the religious Hay, an exception was Senator John V. Ellis, who expounded on the relationship between God and nature in, for example, 'Summary of the President's Address,' Bulletin of the Natural History Society of New Brunswick 24 (1906): 489-500
87. William F. Ganong, "The Echinodermata of New Brunswick,' Bulletin of the Natural History Society of New Brunswick 7 (1888): 13
88. Report of the Orinthology Committee, 19 October 1909, NHS General Minutes, 1890-1911, F41, S108, NHS fonds, ANBM
89. Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World: A History of the Modern Sensibility (New York: Pantheon, 1983), 17-41
90. Steeves, Nature Study and Agricultural Course. Province of New Brunswick, Summer Rural Science School for Teachers at the Fisher Vocational School, Woodstock (Fredericton: 1914), 4, notes each student must have a separate plot in the garden, which would provide a basis for independent observation and record keeping
91. 'School Grounds,' Educational Review 4, no. 7 (December 1890): 111
92. Cited in Educational Review 7, no. 11 (April 1894), 206
93. John Brittain, Elementary Agriculture and Nature Study (Toronto: Educational Book, 1911), 181-4
94. F.E. MacDiarmid, M.B. Moore, and I.N. Fanjoy, Science and Agriculture for New Brunswick Schools (Toronto: Copp Clark, 1942), 55-60
95. Thornton, 'Out-Migration from Atlantic Canada,' 8
96. George U. Hay, Lecture 2, n.d., F93, S128, NHS fonds, ANBM, 14
97. Ganong, 'Echinodermata,' 13
98. For a good discussion of early modern natural history collections, see Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994)
99. For the political messages of modern collections, see Christopher Looby, "The Constitution of Nature: Taxonomy as Politics in Jefferson, Peale, and Bartram,' in Museum Studies, ed. Carbonell, 143-57
100. In 1893 Lieutenant-Governor John Boyd, for example, agreed to act as patron of the NHS: Minutes of the Council of the NHS, 1862-1901, 3 October 1893, F37, S108, NHS fonds, ANBM
101. William Parenteau, 'A "Very Determined Opposition to the Law": Conservation, Angling Leases, and Social Conflict in the Canadian Atlantic Salmon Fishery, 1867-1914,' Environmental History 9, no. 3 (July 2004): 436-63
102. NHS General Minutes, 1862-90, 20 November 1863, F40, S127, NHS fonds, ANBM
103. Lianne McTavish, 'From Cake to Caribou: Women's Contributions to the New Brunswick Museum, 1862-1950' (paper presented at the annual conference of the Universities Art Association of Canada, Victoria, BC, 10-12 November 2005)
104. and Annual Report, 21 January 1896, NHS General Minutes, 1862-90, F40, S127, NHS fonds, ANBM
105. Letter of 14 October 1914, read 4 February 1915, NHS General Minutes, 1912-1920, F42, S127, NHS fonds, ANBM
106. Berger, Science, God, and Nature, 17-18
107. For the 'Oriental' exhibition held in 1924, see Minute Book of the Council of the NHS, 1924-1942, 21 October 1924, F39, S127, NHS fonds, ANBM
108. for social events involving food, dancing, and music, see Scrapbook of the Ladies' Auxiliary, 7 February, 1908, F113, S128A, NHS fonds, ANMB
109. and Conversazione program, 29 December 1864, F131, S128A, NHS fonds, ANBM
110. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage, 1990), 1:95: 'Where there is power, there is resistance, and yet, or rather consequently, this resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power.'
111. Young, The Making and Unmaking of a University Museum, 118-24
112. and Luke, Museum Politics, 3
113. Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, 'The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception,' in The Cultural Studies Reader, ed. Simon During (New York: Routledge, 1993), 29-43
114. Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle (Detroit: Black and Red, 1983)
115. Barbara Maria Stafford, Artful Science: Enlightenment Entertainment and the Eclipse of Visual Education (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999), xxi-xxvii
116. Ien Ang, 'Dallas and the Ideology of Mass Culture,' in The Cultural Studies Reader, ed. During, 403-20
117. and John Fiske, Understanding Popular Culture (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989)
118. I thank my colleague Steve Turner for suggesting this interpretation
119. Conn, Museums and American Intellectual Life, 192-232
120. and Bennett, The Birth of the Museum, 163-73