‘Ziegfeld Girls Coming Down A Runway’

Abstract

Between 1876 and 1997, the exhibition policies and practices of the mineralogical collections of the Smithsonian Institution went through a number of shifts. Focusing on the social and intellectual contexts of these shifts and their reception by museum-goers and reviewers, this article looks at the process by which natural history museums capture, discipline and display natural objects. The article builds on the premise that natural history museums and exhibitions exist, in part, to teach people how they should look at and think about nature. The author draws on Arturo Escobar’s idea of ‘regimes of nature’ to examine how shifts in exhibitionary practices manifest shifting understandings of nature in the United States. From 1876 to 1997, she identifies four different nature regimes represented in the Smithsonian mineral exhibits. These regimes propose different articulations between nature, the nation-state, US capital and the museum-going public and the author labels them ‘nature as resource’, ‘nature as order’, ‘nature as spectacle’ and ‘nature as fine art’.