San Diego Natural History Museum

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The San Diego Natural History Museum was founded in 1874 as the San Diego Society of Natural History. The present location of the museum in San Diego's Balboa Park was dedicated on January 14, 1933.^[1]

It is the second oldest scientific institution west of the Mississippi and the oldest in Southern California. The newest addition to the museum was dedicated in April 2001, doubling exhibit space.

1 History
2 References
3 External links

[edit] History

[edit] First fifty years

Allosaur at the San Diego Natural History Museum

Founded in 1874, the San Diego Society of Natural History is the oldest scientific institution in southern California, and the second oldest west of the Mississippi. In its initial years, the Society was the region's primary source of scientific culture, serving a small but growing community eager for information about its natural resources. Early society members established a weather station, petitioned to create Torrey Pines State Reserve, and garnered support for the new San Diego Zoological Society.

In June 1912, the Society met for the first time in its new quarters in the Hotel Cecil, recently built on Sixth Street in San Diego. Later that same month exhibits created by Frank and Kate Stephens were installed in a single room and adjoining alcove, and were open to the public several afternoons each week. The Society had opened its first museum.

In 1917, the Society purchased a vacant Balboa Park building from the 1915 Panama-California Exposition. Here the Society moved its growing collections and library to create the San Diego Natural History Museum. The Board defined its commitment "to educate and help people know and love nature" and began a variety of educational programs, many of them using specimens from museum collections in city and county schools.

The museum occupied three different buildings in Balboa Park before celebrating its 50th anniversary. Community leaders recognized the need for a permanent museum of adequate size. San Diego's leading architect, William Templeton Johnson (1877-1957) was commissioned by the Society of Natural History to design its new museum building on Balboa Park's East Prado. Johnson had earned his reputation with his design of the Fine Arts Gallery (now the San Diego Museum of Art) and the downtown San Diego Trust & Savings Bank, among other buildings.

[edit] World War II

The Society was notified on March 5, 1943, that the United States Navy wished to take over the Natural History Museum for hospital use at once, becoming the infectious diseases ward. Some renovation took place in the facility, including the addition of an elevator designed to handle hospital gurneys and a nurses' station between floors. Both features remain in use today. The U. S. Navy takeover of the museum building for the duration of the war resulted in damage to the collections, exhibits, and the building itself.^[2]

The main library and its librarian were moved to San Diego State College; the rest of the treasured and fragile exhibits were hastily packed, crated and moved into a total of 32 separate places. Exhibits too large to be moved were stuffed into the north wing on the main floor. A major renovation commenced once staff was allowed to reoccupy the building. Forced to look at all collections and exhibits in this rehabilitation process, the board adopted a firm policy to restrict collections to the southwestern United States and northern Mexico. The museum continued its steady growth with post-war San Diego, despite periods of financial stress. Staff upheld professional practices regardless of limited resources, and the American Association of Museums accredited the Museum in 1974.

[edit] Present building

The construction of the new headquarters was made possible through a grant of $125,000 from Ellen Browning Scripps, and by public subscription. However, the full amount needed for the building could not be raised in the Depression years. Only the first unit of the building, at the south end of the lot, and one wing extending toward the north, could be built. The north and east exterior facades were left plain as temporary walls slated for future expansion, and remained so for sixty years.

The new $175,000 Natural History Museum building was formally dedicated on January 14, 1933.

Completed and dedicated in March, 2001, new construction more than doubled the size of the old building, from 65,000 square feet of usable space to approximately 150,000 square feet. The expansion provided new space for the Museum's research, educational, and administrative activities.

[edit] Dead Sea Scrolls Exhibit

Dead Sea Scroll - part of Isaiah Scroll (Isa 57:17 - 59:9), 1QIsa^b

From June 29-December 31, 2007, the Museum hosted an exhibition of the Dead Sea Scrolls, funded with approximately six million dollars in grants and billed as the largest such exhibit to date. It includes twenty-four Dead Sea Scrolls, ten of which are exhibited for the first time. It also features the oldest manuscript containing the Ten Commandments, as well as a section of the Copper Scroll, which is the only scroll found that written on copper.

The Museum describe the scrolls as "link[ing] us to the ancient Middle East and to the formative years of Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity. The exhibit's curator, Risa Levitt Kohn, a San Diego State University professor, stated in a Voice of San Diego interview of June 2, 2007, that the Dead Sea Scrolls should not be confused with the Gnostic Gospels.^[3] She also stated: "The truth is, I wouldn't classify these as Jewish texts, either. Because I would say Judaism, the way we tend to think about it, even early Judaism, is not yet fully crystallized in this period, in the same way that Christianity isn't either."^[4] In an exchange of letters published in Jewish Sightseeing on January 9, 2007, Kohn stated that she was a "Dead Sea Scrolls scholar."^[5] In a Voice of San Diego interview of June 2, 2007, Kohn explained: "I didn't really study Dead Sea Scrolls much, other than in kind of a tangential way. But before this project came about I was already working on a book with a colleague of mine at San Diego State, on Jewish and Christian origins. And it's impossible to talk about that period of time -- the first century BCE, the first century CE -- without doing something on the Dead Sea Scrolls, because that's so important."^[6]

The exhibit includes:

Authentic Dead Sea Scrolls, with interpretations and translation of text;
Ancient, illuminated manuscripts;
Ancient Qumran: A Virtual Reality Tour;
Authentic artifacts and original excavation equipment;
Panoramic photography;
Scientific exploration.^[7]

Twelve of the scrolls have been provided by Israel and three lent by Jordan. Three months into the exhibit, the Israel Antiquities Authority exchanged these for twelve others, including the Deuteronomy manuscript that contains the Ten Commandments. Pnina Shor, head of conservation for the Israel Antiquities Authority, says that "It's part of the attempt to limit their exposure to light; after each showing, a scroll is given at least a year of 'rest' in the dark."^[8]

The opening of the exhibit was widely covered by newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times^[8] and San Diego Union-Tribune.^[9]

The San Diego Union-Tribune article quotes to David Noel Freedman, a University of California San Diego scholar who has studied the Dead Sea Scrolls for more than fifty years, as asserting that some of the scrolls some were written in Jerusalem and others created at Qumran by the Essenes; it also describes Norman Golb a University of Chicago historian and manuscript scholar as a dissenter, that argues that that the scrolls had nothing to do with Qumran, and as criticizing the exhibit as "one-sided." In respect to Golb's statements the newspaper quotes Risa Levitt Kohn, a San Diego State University professor and curator of the exhibit as responding: "We have tried to go with the general scholarly consensus ... This is an academic pursuit. If you introduce too many competing theories into the show, you walk away with nothing."^[9]

The Los Angeles Times article named A lively debate over the Dead Sea Scrolls, states that most scholars consider the scrolls to be the articles of faith of the Essenes sect, but dissidents of that view are disputing the majority's thinking and have complained that the public has gotten a slanted view of the scrolls. The dissident scenarios includes one that refers to the scrolls as a library of sacred Jewish texts smuggled out of Jerusalem to protect them from the Romans; a newer theory, based on a large find of pottery fragments found in Qumran, forwards the theory that the settlement was a pottery factory; and another one forwards the view that Qumran was home to James, Jesus brother, and his group who were engaged in the armed struggle against Rome. It quotes Golb as stating: "The museum, instead of guiding viewers toward an understanding of the controversy over the origin and significance of the scrolls, manifestly undertakes to manipulate the layman's comprehension of them."^[8] The curator, Risa Levitt Kohn, acknowledged the existence of competing theories, but chose to stick mainly to the mainstream view: "You don't want to confuse people with so many competing theories," she said.

In a review of the exhibit catalogue, Golb argues that the exhibit was designed to mislead the public on the current state of research in this field of studies.^[10] In a review of the unpublished script of the Ancient Qumran: A Virtual Reality Tour film being shown at the exhibit, Golb stated that marginal comments made in the script by the film's author "raise troubling issues regarding the genesis and purpose of this show." ^[11]