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Creator (Definite): Brita Brenna
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Full title:
Brenna, B. 'The Frames of Specimens: Glass Cases in Bergen Museum Around 1900', in Thorsen, L.E., Rader, K.A. and Dodd, A. (eds.), Animals on Display: the Creaturely in Museums, Zoos, and Natural History (Pennsylvania University Press, 2013), pp. 37-57.
Description:
Addresses the role of glass cases in the making of museum nature during the late nineteenth century. Drawing Isobel Armstrong's Victorian Glassworlds, as well as an essay by Walter Benjamin, it uses the case of the Bergen Museum of Natural History to 'query what role glass and the glass case play in constructions of museum nature and, in particular, constructions of animals' (37) at his time. 'How do glass cases construct museum nature in Bergen, and how do glass cases construct "the museum"?' (39)
In conclusion, it argues that the cases in fact ended up dominating museum spaces at the expense of zoological objects themselves: 'Looking at the many pictures of museum galleries from this period, the degree to which the glass cases have become the most important features of the room is striking. They prevent our investigation of the objects, throwing themselves on us with an insistence of their particular materiality. The great paradox is that they were installed in the museums to make museum nature visible and legible for the greatest possible number of people.' (54)
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Cited byA. Dodd et. al., 'Introduction', in L.E. Thorsen, et. al. (eds), Animals on Display: the Creaturely in Museums, Zoos, and Natural History. 2013. pp. 1-11.
Description:Dodd et. al. describe Brenna's article as follows:
'Moving into the nineteenth century, Brita Brenna turns attention to the emergence of the glass case (or vitrine) and its impact on the preservation, display, and reception of museum objects - including taxidermied animals. Her primary focus is on how the localized collection and display practices of a relatively small and unknown natural history museum signified wider ambitions of universalized methods - a turn-of-the-century instance of "thinking globally, acting locally," as it were. Bergen Museum, on the western coast of Norway, was eager to participate in the burgeoning museum scene of the late nineteenth century, perhaps most illustriously exemplified in Europe by the British Museum (Natural History)... Brenna emphasises the general importance of glass for allowing diplays of rare and valuable objects in full view of the public without the direct assistance or instruction of museum staff. Often, however, any specific stuffed animal behind or within glass, while visually arresting, was envisioned by museum curators as merely an illustration of the accompanying authoritative text explaining its taxonomy, habits, habitat, and so on. Although Brenna foregrounds the historical example of Bergen Museum, her essay operates against a more nebulous backdrop, in which the subtle intangibility of glass, and its profound effects on how we look (through it) at objects and things, shapes a modern visual culture and its complex, problematic inclusion of the animal subject'. (6)
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Cited byLiv Emma Thorsen, 'A Dog of Myth and Matter: Barry the Saint Bernard in Bern', in Thorsen et. al., Animals on Display (2013), pp. 128-149.
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'As Brita Brenna demonstrates in chapter 2, the glass case gives museum items their import and authority.' (133) -
QuotesJohn Berger, About Looking. 1980.
Description:
'Man becomes aware of himself returning the look [of the animal]," John Berger wrote.' -
QuotesPaul Scheerbart, Glasarchitektur (Berlin, 1914).
Description:'In his 1914 treatise Glasarchitektur, Paul Scheerbart announces the arrival of "a culture of glass." In this new glass milieu, he claims, humanity will become completely transformed. So will nature: "The wole of nature will in all regions of culture appear to us in quite different light, after the introduction of glass architecture." Scheerbart's theme was glass used as a material for new buildings, private as well as public. the material would be a means of reforming the sensibility of people, the nature of society, and the perception of nature.' (37)
' The German art critic, philosopher, and writer of futuristic novels Paul Scheerbart (quoted above) wrote his treatise as an inaugaral text announcing a culture of glass. Glass culture was for him both contemporary and a fact of the future. However, Scheerbart wrote at the end of a centrury that had witnessed an incessant occupation with glass.' (39)
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QuotesWalter Benjamin, 'Experience and Poverty', in Benjamin, Selected Writings: Vol. 2 (1927-1934) (Cambridge, University Press; 1999), pp. 731-736.
Description:'"Glass is, in general, the enemy of secrets" - Walter Benjamin.' (37)
'In his essay "Experience and Poverty," Walter Benjamin writes of Glass that it is "such a hard, smooth material to which nothing can be fixed." It is a material on which there can be left no traces, according to him. Trying to focus my gaze on the glass cases in Bergen, Benjamin's description seems perfectly valid.' (53)
'"Glass is, in general, the enemy of secrets," Benjamin wrote, continuing, "it is also the enemy of possession."' (54)
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Related toJørgen Brunchorst
Description:Brenna notes that Brunchorst was 'hired in 1886 as a curator in the botanical deprtment in Bergen Museum... He was particularly eager to reform and reorder the museum, and became the first secretary to the natural history department and later the first director of the museum itself. Brunchorst, born in Bergen, had studied plant physiology at various universities in Germany before being appointed curator of the botanical collection.' (45)
Also that ' Brunchorst resigned his post in 1906, after intensive internal fighting, to ebecome a diplomat in the newly independent Norweigan state.' (53)
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Related toFridtjof Nansen
Description:Brenna notes that 'When the young curator of Bergen Museum, Fridtjof Nansen, arrived in Hamburg in February 1886, he visited the zoological garden, the art museum, and the opera on his first day... The promising student Nansen had been hired as a curator at the museum in 1882, at the age of twenty-one.'
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Related toUniversitetsmuseet i Bergen
Description:Brenna: 'Established in 1825, Bergen Museum was the first purpose-built museum in Norway... The monumental stone building, inaugurated in 1867, was expanded with two new wings in 1898, fulfilling a long overdue extension of the premises.' (38)
'Bergen Museum, like other museums, relied heavily on exchange to develop collections that would engage the public and make good research material... Within just a couple of months in 1888, we find the zoological department in the museum corresponding with museums and individuals from across the Western world, from Minnesota to Vienna, Tromsø to Weymouth, Washington to Prague. The list of individuals involved includes clergymen, museum curators, hunters, and small and large dealers in animal specimens.' (43)
During the 1890s, 'The museum opened a biological research station, ran a summer course for schoolteachers, presented a popular lecture series titled "Lectures for Everyman" (which offered 125 lectures in 1894), published the leading Norwegian scie.tific journal, Naturen, opened a botanical garden, and not least remained active in advertising the museum as the foundation of anew university in Norway. Crowning these efforts were the museum's two new wings, inaugurated in 1898.' (45)
