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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XIX. No. 485. 



MUSEUMS AS PLAGES OF POPULAR 

 CULTURE. 



A CONFERENCE Oil tliis important subject 

 took place at Mannheim, Germany, on Sep- 

 tember 21 and 22, having been convened 

 by the Ceutralstelle fiir Arbeiter-Wohl- 

 fahrtseinriehtungen, an organization for 

 social Avork that has its headquarters in 

 Berlin. The meetings were held in the 

 Aula of the city Realgymnasium, under the 

 presidency of Dr. Schenkel, minister of 

 the interior for Baden, and were attended 

 by about two hundred people interested in 

 this social question, of whom over fifty 

 were practical museum officials, from all 

 parts of Germany, with half a dozen from 

 Switzerland, Austria and England. A 

 philosophically ordered program had been 

 drawn up some time beforehand, and was 

 carried out with very slight modification. 

 We take the following from a special report 

 in the Museums Journal. The meeting on 

 each day lasted from 9 :30 a.m. till 4 -.30 

 P.M., with an hour's interval for lunch. 

 Opportunities for social intercourse Avere 

 abundant— at lunch, dinner and in the 

 evenings; the museums and similar insti- 

 tutions of Mannheim and Heidelberg were 

 thrown open to members, many of whom 

 also visited the museums of Darmstadt, 

 Mainz, Worms and other neighboring 

 towns. Free seats were reserved for mem- 

 bers at a special performance of 'The 

 Merchant of Venice, ' to which work-people 

 were admitted for 40 pf. 



The object of the conference was to dis- 

 cuss in what ways museums could bring 

 themselves into touch with the working 

 classes. The subject was introduced by 

 Dr. Lichtwark, of Hamburg, who pointed 

 out that modern museums differed from 

 universities and academies in being open 

 free to all classes; nevertheless, the very 

 small proportion that the number of their 

 visitors bore to that of the inhabitants 

 showed that they needed to be made still 



more popular. Universal rules could not 

 be laid down, but he foresaw a great revolu- 

 tion in the equipment and methods of 

 museums, which would have to be brought 

 into relation M'ith men's daily life. The 

 gradual change in the nature of museums 

 was then traced by Dr. Jessen, of Berlin, 

 who dealt with museums of fine and ap- 

 plied art, and by Dr. Lampert, of Stutt- 

 gart, who spoke of natural history mu- 

 seums. There followed what professed to 

 be accounts of actual attempts made by 

 various museums to render their treasures 

 more useful to a wide public; but these 

 tended to become simple descriptions of 

 the museums. One gathered, however, 

 that the Bremen city museum depended 

 more on labels than on guide-books, that 

 visits to it were obligatory on the school 

 children, who afterwards were made to 

 write essays on what they had seen, and 

 that a reading-room and lecture-hall were 

 connected with the museum. Dr. Lehmann 

 explained how the exhibits of the Altona 

 museum were devised so as to force their 

 meaning on the dullest spectator, e. g., two 

 cases of the same assemblage of animals, 

 one in summer, the other in winter; the 

 popularity of the recently installed fishery 

 exhibit showed how crowds could easily be 

 interested in what really came home to 

 them. A somewhat similar museum at 

 Celle was described by Dr. Bomann. Pro- 

 fessor Andreae advocated the use of photo- 

 graphs and their constant change, as at the 

 Iloemer Museum, Hildesheim; he thought 

 that small museums should be many-sided. 

 The description of the geological room at 

 the Berlin museum, admirablj'^ arranged by 

 Dr. Jaekel, showed that it was intended for 

 students rather than the great public. Mr. 

 Osthaus believed that a joy in art should 

 and could be brought to the working 

 classes, but the Folkwang Museum aimed 

 at this by first influencing manufacturers 

 and leaders of work through the exhibition 



