Brian Noble

Articulating Dinosaurs by Brian Noble is a dense yet accessible work that crosses and brings together several disciplines. The work is challenging but rewards every bit of effort put into understanding Noble's ideas.

I have been unsure how to write this review, mainly because there is so much information I found interesting and so many connections I found illuminating. As a result I am going to primarily speak in generalities about what I personally took away from the book. When I write a review like this, I want to make clear that any misunderstanding or overreaching will be mine. Also, the goal of this approach is not to argue for what I took away so much as to give an idea of the types of thoughts the book generated in my case. Your reading will certainly lead you down different avenues of thought so my hope is that my thoughts will simply give some inkling of what types of thoughts you too may have.

When we go to a natural history museum we largely expect to see and learn about creatures of both the past and the present. As such we tend to think of what we take in as simply facts presented as facts. Yet that is a naive assumption since in presenting anything there have to be decisions about how and what to show or highlight. Taking this a step further, those decisions are also a reflection of the times during which they are made. This book uses two specific examples of dinosaurs displayed on opposite ends of the 20th century. Noble examines the actual remains, museum and social ideas that shaped the display of these remains and the various ways in which these displays were perceived by the public at large. All of this is very interesting in and of itself and Noble draws some important conclusions from this.

Yet my biggest takeaway was actually from the period after I first finished the book. I am curious about how this same process plays out in so many other fields we take for granted. My own background used advertisements and other sources to do similar things but these areas are almost obvious for such treatment. That doesn't make them less valuable just because they are more obviously a reflection of their historic periods. Now, however, I want to know where else we can look, other specialized areas that we might think of as separate from the whims of popular opinion or culture making. That type of research and analysis is what this work makes me want to find, do or at least ponder.

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in museums (both casually or looking toward curatorial information), dinosaurs, social anthropology and even history in general as told through objects. The book is not a breezy read but is very accessible to anyone willing to look up the periodic specialized word.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.… (mehr)