Delving into museum's own past fascinating

Dr Rosi Crane, Otago Museum honorary curator of history of science. Photo: Gerard O'Brien
Dr Rosi Crane, Otago Museum honorary curator of history of science. Photo: Gerard O'Brien
Dunedin historian Dr Rosi Crane, who is the Otago Museum’s honorary curator of history of science, has also taken on the big task of writing a history of the museum, which last year celebrated its 150th anniversary.

Dr Crane told reporter John Gibb about the museum’s colourful past and discussed the challenges of writing the history.

In writing a history of the Otago Museum, Dr Rosi Crane faces some big challenges.

This work requires her to delve again into the colourful world of international bird specimen trading, and ''swapping'' between museums in the 19th century.

Dr Crane, who is the museum's honorary curator, history of science, will also reflect on the lives of some of the early directors (initially called ''curators'') of the museum, which last year celebrated its 150th anniversary.

''One of the challenges will be to keep a big picture in mind and not let the just-so stories of how the leopard, or the whale or anything else arrived in the museum [take over],'' she said.

Another crucial challenge was the ''very fragmentary nature of the archival record''.

''I've got correspondence from Manchester, Liverpool, Cambridge, Edinburgh, and London in the UK, all of the main New Zealand centres, then Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide.

''Then, in Europe, Bremen, Prague, Naples.''

This fragmentation was also ''true for history in general, but particularly so for scientists''.

''They did not keep vast swags [of information] themselves, thinking their published record would suffice - it does, but only to a partial extent.''

The ''archival survival'' of even relatively unknown literary figures was very much greater than for scientists of similar stature.

The 19th century trade in, and and swapping of, bird and other animal specimens, was ''huge''.

''For Otago, and indeed other museums round the world, much could be achieved by exchanging specimens in a system of more-or-less informal swapsies.''

Born in Orpington, Kent, in England - ''which is actually South London for those geographically challenged'' - Dr Crane already had two university degrees, from Sheffield University and City, University of London, before she shifted to Dunedin with her husband, Mike, and two boys, Paul and Matt, in 1991.

She had earlier successfully applied for a job as assistant film librarian with the BBC Natural History Unit in Bristol, England, the centre of the wildlife film making world, where she had worked for 15 years.

Later, she was offered a job in Dunedin with TVNZ's natural history unit as their library manager, a more commercially focused role.

''After 15 years, two somewhat larger boys, and varying changes of ownership TVNZ to NHNZ, I was made redundant,'' she said.

She decided to go back to university, and, in 2015, had completed a PhD through the then University of Otago history and art history department, focusing on Thomas Jeffery Parker (1850-97), a little-known English biologist and ardent evolutionist who, in 1880, became curator of the Otago Museum - then known as the University Museum, and part of Otago University, in the 19th century.

Prof Parker had earlier grown up in London and there worked for eight years for Thomas Henry Huxley, who was known as ''Darwin's bulldog'', and was a strong defender of Darwin and evolution.

Dr Crane had included in her thesis a chapter on Parker's museum, as he had been appointed to a dual role as professor of biology and curator of the museum.

''Turns out he was a most interesting little-known chap - for instance, he invented a method of preserving cartilaginous fish [sharks and rays] and organs like stomachs and intestines using hot glycerine.''

After she gained her Otago PhD, Otago Museum people had ''offered me a role as an honorary curator'', which she had agreed to take on.

She visited the museum every afternoon, where she undertook historical research, and also travelled to conferences, delivering academic articles.

''There's not a lot of point digging up stories in archives if you don't tell people, so the preparation of talks [and] writing articles occupies me.''

When not fossicking in the museum's old records, she is sometimes pursuing her love of classical music.

''I sing tenor in City Choir Dunedin.

''I add volume!

''And for my sins I'm treasurer, which I find a challenge as I'm not a natural bean counter,'' she added.

She also volunteers as an usher at Chamber Music New Zealand concerts and is a ''total book-lover'', having been ''involved with sorting books every Sunday morning for the Regent Theatre 24 hour book sale since 2013''.

Having a sense of humour can come in handy in her historical work.

One of the museum's early donors was a German bird collector called Otto Finsch - ''good name for a bird man, eh?'' - but ''matching up what birds we have with the scant information that has survived is not yet complete''.

She recently discovered that the small muntjac deer, on display in the museum's Animal Attic, had died in the Botanic Garden, and was presented to the museum where Edwin Jennings, the museum taxidermist, stuffed it in 1907.

''It must have been one of his last as he died from a heart attack at aged 72, brought on from running for a train to get to work!''

john.gibb@odt.co.nz

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