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Journal article
Projecting the Museum: moving images in, and of, Scotland's national museum
The century-long engagement of museums with the moving image is examined through a case study of its deployment by National Museums Scotland (inclusive of its predecessor organisations the Royal Scottish Museum and the Royal Museum of Scotland). The study engages the academic genres of film studies and museum studies to...Swinney, Geoffrey N
Cinema, television, video, film, Royal Scottish Museum, National Museums Scotland, and historical geography
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Journal article
Appropriate and appropriated sites for elephants: a case study of the making of museum objects
Through a case study of the museum career of a mounted specimen of African elephant, the nature of “museum objects” and sites in which they engage in the construction of meaning are examined. The paper tracks a series of representations through a museum and explores how this representative of the...Swinney, Geoffrey N
material culture, natural museology, remediation, translation, meta-representation, and afterlife
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2008
Journal article
Enchanted invertebrates: Blaschka models and other simulacra in National Museums Scotland
This paper examines the role of natural history models in museum displays in the second half of the nineteenth century and in the early decades of the twentieth century. In particular it considers the 257 Blaschka models of invertebrate animals and some of the other natural history models acquired by...Swinney, Geoffrey N
invertebrates, glass models , museum display, and educational models
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1999
Journal article
A long-finned specimen of Beryx decadactylus caught in the North-eastern Atlantic of Rockall
A long-finned specimen of Beryx decadactylus from of Rockall is reported and the Northeastern Atlantic persistence of juvenile characters in subadult and adult fish is discussed.Swinney, Geoffrey N ; Holmes, M ; Blackadder, J S ; Pye, Sankurie E
atypical specimen, Beryx decadactylus, distribution records, and juvenile characters
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2010
Journal article
Edward Forbes (1815-1854) and the exhibition of natural order in Edinburgh
The roles, affordances and social agency of natural history museums are discussed in relation to the writings of Edward Forbes. These signal a motivation, in the mid-nineteenth-century, to naturalize the established social order through the systematic arrangement and display of natural history specimens. The perceived importance of the embodied messages...Swinney, Geoffrey N
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2010
Journal article
Robert Jameson (1774-1854) and the concept of a 'public museum'
Attention is drawn to Robert Jameson’s distinction between “the public” and “the working classes” in relation to the audience for the Natural History Museum of the College (later the University of) Edinburgh. This distinction is discussed, together with specific usage of the related term “closed”, in the context of recent...Swinney, Geoffrey N
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2018
Journal article
The Janitor and his museum: John Wilson (1775–1832) and the teaching of ‘practical zoology’ in early nineteenth-century Edinburgh
A description by William Jardine of Applegirth of the state of taxidermy in early nineteenth-century Edinburgh draws attention to the agency of the University of Edinburgh’s Janitor, John Wilson, in contributing to the University’s Natural History Museum, in the building of his own private museum collection, and in the teaching...Swinney, Geoffrey N ; McGowan, R Y
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2017
Journal article
Recycled objects: curatorial practice and the engagement of contemporary art in the interpretation of historical African figurative sculpture
Through a case study approach those acts of assembling, juxtaposing and exhibiting collections of objects, which constitute the western museum, are analysed as artistic processes which produce the museum as a form of ‘public art’. The paper takes as its fulcrum L’Ange, a contemporary artwork formed from recycled materials by...Swinney, Geoffrey N