Restoring Science as Culture in Portugal
Using the 27th Annual Conference of the Scientific Instrument Commission as a starting point, David Pantalony presses for the integration of scientific objects into a wider variety of cultural venues.
Outside the entrance to the Museu de Ciência, Lisbon, Portugal (photo from SIC Lisbon 2008 Web site)
Portugal, once a country of explorers, is now for explorers – the cultural kind; and the history of science is emerging as an important part of this scene. At the opening session of the 2008 annual conference for the Scientific Instrument Commission (16-21 September) at the Museu de Ciência in Lisbon, Mário Soares, the former President of Portugal, addressed participants about the urgency to preserve scientific heritage; he was followed by the Rector of the University of Lisbon, who spoke eloquently about the Museu de Ciência’s historic instrument collections, botanical gardens and natural history collections as a vital part of a developing cultural zone in Lisbon. It is rare to hear decision-makers talk about the history of science as a central part of the national and urban culture economy.
There was much anticipation for the 27th annual SIC conference. In recent years, scholars have been learning about remarkable collections of historic instruments in Lisbon, Porto, and Coimbra. The perfectly preserved, near-complete collection of nineteenth-century French instruments at the University of Coimbra (the reason I have visited there three times in the last four years) is one of the best snapshots of the Parisian precision trade outside of France. One finds its parallel in French paintings and decorative arts at Lisbon’s renowned Gulbenkian Museum.
The “Gabinete de Física,” dating from 1772 at the University of Coimbra (photo courtesy David Pantalony)
With this kind of untapped potential, institutions across the country are in the midst of coordinating a national inventory of scientific collections. One of the leaders of this effort, Marta Lourenço, has studied the origins and present challenges of hundreds of university collections across Europe (including those in archaeology, fine arts, scientific instruments, medical, natural history etc.). She calls this vast network of neglected material knowledge, which has shaped and continues to shape Western civilization, the “dark matter” of our universities.(1)
One outgrowth of this work in Portugal is a unique emphasis on preserving the original spaces related to these collections. The Museu de Ciência in Lisbon, formerly the Polytechnical University, has restored a 19th-century chemical laboratory with the original instruments, documents, laboratory benches, basins, fume hoods and an adjacent demonstration/lecture amphitheater. Within the same museum one finds a natural history collection from the 19th century; outside the building, part of the larger museum complex, one can wander through the historic botanical gardens of Lisbon that were once a research and teaching resource. Each collection offers parallel, comparative exploration into Portugal’s past; each embodies an astoundingly preserved diversity. At the University of Coimbra, the oldest university in Portugal (1308), recently named a UNESCO world heritage center, a wide spectrum of the 18th century is similarly preserved in a baroque library, historic botanical gardens, the old physics faculty, and the former chemistry building and laboratory, which is now a restored museum and education center. The physics faculty has a complete physical cabinet from the late 18th century with instruments from London, Paris and local Portuguese makers, which remain in their original positions within the Brazilian wood cases. The University of Porto and other local collections are undertaking similar preservation projects.
Multi-colored chemical samples in the collection at the Parada Leitão Museum, Institute Superior de Engenharia do Porto, Portugal (photo courtesy David Pantalony)
These Portuguese initiatives served as an appropriate backdrop for the annual SIC activities (talks, workshops, several museum and collection visits), with an increasing emphasis on integration into a broader historical and public audience. One repeated conference theme, owing to Portugal’s strength in this area, was instruments and their spaces. There were several talks about instruments and architecture and their interactions in a wider historical context. There were also talks about innovative and ambitious preservation projects, including descriptions of little-known collections and museums in Brazil. There were many new faces, such as an installation artist who has gathered information from collections world-wide to produce a photographic installation piece of historic samples of Iceland Spar.(2) One talk about a relatively familiar instrument demonstrated the shift within the SIC to novel interpretations and themes. Debbie Douglas of the MIT Museum has been creating an exhibit on their recently-acquired Keuffel & Esser slide rule collection. The exhibit will not be an old-fashioned tale of slide rules, how they worked and their impact on science; rather, it will be a cultural exploration of this scientific icon, which, along with browline glasses and slim ties were part of the standard MIT uniform in the 1950s and 60s.
Costantino Sigismondi of the University of Rome at a navigation workshop on the roof of the Museu de Ciência. Participants lined up their sites overlooking historic Lisbon and the Tagus river. (Photo from SIC Lisbon 2008 Web site)
What can we do with these collections? One answer is to encourage more integration into mixed-discipline exhibitions, programs and installations that raise unlikely connections and foster a new dialogue with the public about science. Historic instruments are not just a strange sub-specialty within the history of science, but have the potential to play a larger public role and become part of other discussions about life and society. The basic theme of how we need to explore and size-up our surroundings, for example, followed me throughout the week of the conference. On a trip to the Centro de Arte Moderna at the Gulbenkian Foundation, I visited Susana Anágua’s installation “Northless” which featured a wall-size video projection of an inchworm (family name – Geometridae or “earth measurers”) struggling to find its way in an unfamiliar environment. Two other walls displayed a video of a continuously rotating radar antenna and a panel filled with hundreds of randomly fluctuating magnetic compasses. A day later, on the roof of Lisbon’s Museu de Ciência, as several colleagues and I fumbled with and learned to operate replicas of Kamals, astrolabes, Jacob’s staffs, and quadrants with the help of José Pereira, a retired officer of the Portuguese Navy, I felt like we were acting out the human section of Anágua’s installation, unexpected partners with radar systems, inchworms and navigators of all stripes. A visit to the Maritime Museum provided the full breadth of this quintessential Portuguese activity, in all its instrumental, nautical and colonial manifestations. Could these diverse but related experiences be brought together into an unofficial city-wide exhibition? There is something about the dense and diverse cultural landscape of Lisbon that produces these kinds of connections. I look forward to seeing how their collections develop, and how they integrate further into the city’s culture zone.
David Pantalony is Curator of Physical Sciences and Medicine at the Canada Science and Technology Museum.
For information on the conference, visit: http://chcul.fc.ul.pt/sic2008/.
1. “Between Two Worlds: The Distinct Nature and Contemporary Significance of University Museums and Collections in Europe,” Ph.D. dissertation, Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, Paris, October, 2005, Marta C. Lourenço, http://webpages.fc.ul.pt/~mclourenco/
2. See Toril Johannessen’s “In Search of Iceland Spar,” at http://www.toriljohannessen.no/