[Sci-tech-public] MIT Seminar on Environmental and Agricultural History: Jared Farmer, September 18, 2015

Margo F Collett mcollett at mit.edu
Tue Sep 8 10:59:57 EDT 2015


MIT Seminar on Environmental and Agricultural History

Jared Farmer
Associate Professor of History, Stony Brook University

HistoricTrees and Historicized Tree-rings

Around 1900, curators at the American Museum of Natural History mounted a historical chronology onto the
cross-section of a multi-millennial giant sequoia. Over the next few decades, this curatorial convention—treerings
bisected by a timeline—spread to many science museums and nature parks. The majority have since been
deaccessioned, but in Paris, London, Boston, and New York, museumgoers today can still see representations
of linear time across circular rings. Although the cross-sections themselves retain the power to impress, these
megaoral installations, much like megafaunal dioramas, are decidedly old-fashioned in today’s museum world.
They’re so old-fashioned it’s hard to appreciate how novel they were in the early twentieth century. Giving
speech to historic trees was an established tradition, but speaking historically with tree-rings was not.
A historicized cross-section installed in a science museum represented a signicant departure from the
previous century’s analogues: historic trees in situ and arboreal relics in history halls. By investigating what
came before and after, we can better understand the changing relationship between Americans and memory
objects, and Americans and their trees.

Friday, September 18, 2015
2:30 - 4:30 PM
E51-095, cnr of Amherst and Wadsworth Sts.

This talk is sponsored by the MIT History Faculty and the Program in Science, Technology and Society. For more information
contact mcollett at mit.edu<mailto:mcollett at mit.edu>.


[cid:428390E0-62D5-4614-9A9A-62B5023C0876]
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