Where Art and Science Meet: Art and Design at Oxford University Museum of Natural History

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Oxford University Museum of Natural History has one of the most important surviving, and under-researched, museum and university interior schemes in Britain, if not globally. Its ambitious decoration includes 28 portrait statues and busts in the Main Court, which collectively represent a pantheon to the forefathers of natural science; decorative sculpture and ironwork illustrating the natural world; columns representative of the geology of the UK; bespoke furniture and furnishings; and murals in the geology lecture room.Despite increasing academic interest in museums, few studies have focused on university museums. This doctoral project therefore presents a significant opportunity to consider the role of a museum and its fine art and decorative scheme in the development of scientific disciplines and university education. As the first comprehensive interdisciplinary study of OUMNH, this project will significantly enhance our knowledge of its disciplinary and institutional history, and the role of art and design in giving those ideas material expression.The project will firstly document the origins and evolution of the interior scheme. The works, both individually and collectively, raise complex questions regarding the location and function of art and design in science and education, including the role of sculpture in the construction of the scientific canon; relations between the natural world and human creativity; disciplinary interconnections and boundaries; and the communication of intellectual endeavour through the visual arts. The research is therefore inherently intra-disciplinary, and will engage with a range of related academic and curatorial discourses, including geology, botany, zoology, sculpture studies, the history of collections, museology and institutionalhistory. The collaborative nature of the project will enable the successful student to pursue doctoral research in Art History and its intersections with the History of Science and Museology, while gaining first-hand experience within a museum setting. The student will have access to the extensive collections and archives at OUMNH, and related material at the Ashmolean and the Bodleian Libraries. He or she will work closely with the supervisors to determine the focus of the research, establish precise research questions and methodologies, and identify relevant source material.As well as furthering our understanding of the intersections of art, design and science, museology and academia, this project will contribute to the museum's redevelopment plans by creating new ways for engaging a range of audiences in the histories of the arts and of science.