Varats och utvecklingens kedja : en naturhistorisk museiutställning i Göteborg 1923-1968

This dissertation is a museological study of the coming into being of a natural history museum, its building and its adherent zoological exhibition during the years around the First World War. The main problem of the dissertation is the opposition between the curator´s program 1903 for the exhibit and its realization twenty years later. The theoretical perspective is that in its synchronic aspect science, in accordance with the views of swedish sociologist, Thomas Brante, is divided into three levels interdependent upon one another in varying degrees – theoretical, sociological and psychological level. In the present study, the main issue is the weighing of the relative significance of each of these levels. The exhibit was structured as along a scale, or chain, from lesser to greater animals. In this and in other respects it belonged to the legacy of Swedish naturalist Carolus Linnæus. Interest in maintaining this tradition was powerful in the Swedish society during the years before the First World War. Not until around 1950 was the modern theory of evolution explicitly announced to the visitor of the exhibit, still however without the representation of the forces behind it By an investigation of the milieu to which the museum belonged is shed light upon the scientific and other ideals which are represented in its exhibit. The result of an assess of the significance of the theoretical, the sociological ant the psychological level is that contemporay theory does not stand out as a driving force behind the creation of the exhibit in 1923. Nor does the curator of the exhibition emerge as an innovator. Most dominant is however the sociological level. avhandlingen framlägges för disputation i ämnet museolog