Modern Museum Planning

Realistic Exhibits.

In addition to these special facilities of modern museums, which have a decided effect on the planning of buildings, the main exhibition halls of museums are also under going certain changes. Many art museums no longer arrange their objects by schools or countries but are constructing so-called period rooms. These interiors often consist of the original wood work removed from celebrated buildings and re-erected in the museum. Such interiors act as a background for the arrange ment of contemporary furniture, paintings and other objects. Excellent examples of this method are to be found in the Victoria, and Albert Museum, London; the Municipal Museum, Amster dam, Holland; the American wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art ; and the newly constructed Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Science museums are replacing exhaustive scientific series with habitat groups (q.v.), both in miniature and full scale. These show mammals, birds and fishes in their natural environment, and are often prepared on such a large scale as to fill whole exhibition halls. The industrial museums of Munich and Vienna have adopted the same principles in their field, erecting full scale models of mines and industrial plants and period rooms showing ancient shoemakers' shops, apothecaries' stores and similar industries. The arrangement of museum collections in this manner calls for either special planning or extensive alterations.

Extra-mural museum efforts have gone even further than the collecting and installing of museum material in more or less natural surroundings. There are now many instances of museums applying instructive labelling and supplemental exhibits to nature itself. An experiment of this type is the nature trail in the Pali

sades Interstate park, New York and New Jersey. A mile or more of path leading through the woods is lined with signs and labels directing attention to natural phenomena visible from the trail. Tracks of small animals, nests of birds, burrowings of insects, flowering plants and many similar things are marked for the benefit of the visitor in such a manner that specimens are utilized without removing them from their natural environment or resorting to such artificial expedients as stuffing and mounting. A modification of this idea, used in conjunction with small museums scattered through the park, is the placing of outdoor markers indicating important geologicgl features.

As practically no two museums are alike either as to size or scope, the planning of each museum becomes a special problem solved best by a careful study of existing buildings and of the lessons learned by their use.

limmoGRAPHY.—Proceedings of the American Association of Muse ums, vol. i. to xi. (1906-17) ; M. T. Jackson, The ;Museum (1917) ; S. Hurst Seager, "The Lighting of Picture Galleries and Museums," Jour nal Royal Institute of British Architects, vol. xxiii. (1922-23) ; Museum Work, vol. i. to viii. (1919-25) ; C. R. Richards, The Industrial Museum (1925) ; J. Rowley, Taxidermy and Museum Exhibition (1925) ; Muse ums Journal vol. xxv. (1926) ; L. V. Coleman, Manual For Small Museums (1927) ; R. C. Smith, A Bibliography of Museums and Museum Work (1928) . (R. C. S.)