REDPATH MUSEUM Close-up of the talons of a snowy owl./ Les serres d’un harfang des neiges vue de près. Photo: Redpath Museum
“modernizing” by creating new displays and covering much of the building’s Victorian architecture. The Lyman collection was moved to McGill’s MacDonald Campus in 1961 and the Redpath Museum became primarily a public museum, but scientific research still continued, largely in the hands of vertebrate paleontologist, Robert Carroll, hired in 1963.
Sir William Dawson died in 1899, but the Redpath Museum’s collections continued to grow with the acquisition of the Todd African ethnological collection in 1910, the Ferrier mineral collection in 1911 and the Lyman entomological collection in 1914. Although more and more crowded, the Museum became less and less relevant to a university that seemed blind to its potential. By 1915, with the passing of its founder and members of the original governing committee, the Museum began to founder. Elsewhere in North America, museums were finding ways to prosper by adapting to new methods of teaching and new avenues of public engagement. And new museums continued to be built: the Royal Ontario Museum in 1910 and the Musée des Beaux Arts de Montréal in 1913. World-wide interest in chemistry, physics, mechanics and photography flourished. Scientific “demonstrations” by such luminaries as Michael Faraday and Guglielmo Marconi, who demonstrated the strange, invisible force called “radio,” delighted millions. Magic lantern glass slide shows of scientific and geographical wonders became common at meetings of popular scientific societies. Many of these scientific demonstrations were promoted in local newspapers and journals, allowing people everywhere to read about the Wright brothers’ experiments with powered flight and about the unexpected sinking of the RMS Titanic in 1912.
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In 1932, Dr. Thomas Clark, a geologist, became director of the Redpath Museum and found himself struggling to be both a professor and a curator without any staff. Yet the Museum had, once again, acquired a champion. Clark personally collected many of the Museum’s most important fossil specimens. His scientific credentials, coupled with his relentless promotion of the Museum, began to change the latter’s fortunes. In 1938, having acquired a private bequest from J.H. Molson, Clark appointed the first scientific curator since the Museum’s founding, J.D. Cleghorn. In 1942, Clark chose a geology graduate, Alice Johannsen, as assistant curator and by 1950, with the addition of a curator of shells and a part-time secretary, the Museum’s population had reached a total of five. In 1952, Johannsen succeeded Clark as the Museum’s director. Emphasizing the role of museums in public education, she brought the idea of “extension services” to the Canadian museum world. This focus on community engagement and access to public education, born from the ethics of the Second World War, was deeply shared by Johannsen. In 1947, she became one of the founding members, and later president, of the Canadian Museums Association, formed to promote Canada’s museums, art galleries and sites of historical significance. By the late 1950’s, the Redpath Museum entered a phase of
In 1970, the university found itself beset by financial troubles and decided that it could no longer support a public natural history museum in the heart of its campus. It quietly closed the venue’s doors to the public and simply allowed the researchers working there to carry on. John Lewis, from the department of biology, became the new director and the Redpath ceased all public programs. New technical staff were hired to maintain the collections, but the Museum remained closed for the next 15 years. In 1985, the Redpath Museum’s new director, Robert Carroll, cautiously began the institution’s rebirth by gaining permission to open the doors to the public and by hiring a young professor, David Green, in 1986. New exhibits were designed. Research, particularly in zoology, took off in new directions. During the early 1990’s, with Valerie Pasztor as director, the Friends of the Museum were born. They sought support for special public projects and provided docents and volunteers to work with the public. Sunday Family Discovery Workshops were inaugurated in 1993, thanks to a private foundation. Then came the most significant administrative change to the Museum since its birth. In 1995, it was transferred to the faculty of science and began to function as an academic department. It now enjoyed the support of the dean of science and under a succession of innovative directors — Graham Bell from 1995 to 2005, followed by David Green to the present day — it began to prosper as never before. The auditorium was renovated and modernized for video-conferencing, bringing more students to classes. This prompted a move to renovate the first floor leading to the auditorium and then, with the help of a grant