May 29, 1903.] 



SCIENCE. 



847 



plays. Only 43 museums known to the 

 writer contain historical exhibits, and 84 

 per cent, of these are in the oldest states. 

 Massachusetts leads with 12 such mu- 

 seums. Pennsylvania has 10, Virginia 4, 

 Washington, D. C, and New York 3 each, 

 while California and Illinois have 2 each. 

 Maine, Maryland, New Jersey, New 

 Mexico, Ohio, Rhode Island and Utah have 

 each one such museum. Nearly all of these 

 museums are under the control of historical 

 societies, most of which receive little or no 

 aid from piiblic grants and, in common 

 with other learned societies in our country, 

 are financially poor and becoming rela- 

 tively poorer as the country develops. A 

 museum of history maintained at least par- 

 tially by public funds should be established 

 in each of our leading cities. 



Although remarkable progress has been 

 made in the establishment of museums of 

 art in our country within the past ten 

 years, these institutions still exist in sur- 

 prisingly small numbers even in some of 

 our richest states. Massachusetts has 14, 

 New York and Pennsylvania 12 each, 

 Washington, D. C, 7, California 3, Colo- 

 rado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, 

 Rhode Island and Virginia have 2 each, 

 while Georgia, Michigan, Missouri, New 

 Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Utah and Wisconsin 

 each have 1. In addition to these, how- 

 ever, there are 19 general museums which 

 are devoted to both science and art. 

 Eighty per cent, of our art museums are 

 in the states on the Atlantic seaboard. The 

 majority of these institutions are art gal- 

 leries rather than museums of art. No- 

 where is the labeling more imperfect or the 

 arrangement of the exhibits more illogical, 

 from the educational standpoint, than in 

 most of our art museums. Almost no effort 

 is made to give a comprehensive view of 

 the development of art, and the pictures 

 are arranged to produce what is known as 



an 'artistic effect' rather than to show the 

 sequence of the various schools or the 

 causes of their rise and decline. We also 

 learn but little of the life histories of the 

 artists, their aims or achievements, and the 

 display is designed to appeal more to the 

 eye than to the mind. It is not the purpose 

 of this article to criticise, but to indicate 

 what might be done in the future. No de- 

 partment of museum activity can exert a 

 more immediately refining influence upon 

 the people or lead more surely and rapidly 

 to a higher development of public appre- 

 ciation of the beautiful, than that of art. 

 The contrast between the architecture in 

 our American cities and that of those in 

 Europe is sufficient warrant for the con- 

 clusion that although great improvements 

 have been made within the past few years, 

 public appreciation is still crude and un- 

 educated in matters of art. 



Our oldest, most numerous and, in gen- 

 eral, richest museums are those devoted to 

 natural history. These are more uniformly 

 distributed over the country than are mu- 

 seums of other sorts, only 46 per cent, of 

 them being found in the region comprised 

 in the original thirteen states. New York 

 leads with at least 31 such museums, then 

 follow Pennsylvania with 19, Massachu- 

 setts 17, Illinois 15, Ohio 14, and Cali- 

 fornia with 10. Not only are the natural 

 history museums of New York and Penn- 

 sylvania more numerous than those of 

 Massachusetts, but the annual income of a 

 single natural history museum in New 

 York is much greater than the combined 

 incomes of all such museums in Massachu- 

 setts, and the richest museum in Massachu- 

 setts has not one third the annual income 

 of the Field Columbian Museum of Chi- 

 cago. 



Although now small and poorly sup- 

 ported financially, a generation ago the 

 natural history museums of Massachusetts 



