Fifty years of museum work. Autobiography, unpublished papers, and bibliography of Frederic A. Lucas, SC. D
Year: 1933
Type: book
Abstract: To few men are granted fifty years of service to any great cause.In his fifty years of original and inspiring service to three leading American institutions, the National, the Brooklyn, and the American Museums, Frederic A. Lucas holds an absolutely unique record.Other men have served one institution throughout similar periods of life, but to render brilliant and enduring service in three institutions is without a parallel.We do not need to look far for an explanation; he was eminently museum-minded, as evidenced in his rare powers of museum expression both in the artistic and natural arrangement of exhibits and the preparation of descriptive labels.Gifted to an unusual degree with the all-toorare talent of what may be called museum-expression, such gifts would have been valueless and even dangerous if not superposed on a thorough and splendid training as a naturalist.Dr. Lucas's lifelong researches in many branches of natural history, beginning in the year 1880 and ending in 1929, include no less than 365 titles which range in the old-fashioned way from insects to dinosaurs through the whole gamut of fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals.With equal penetration and judgment resulting from his own observations, Dr. Lucas treated this diversity of subjects from the varied standpoints of comparative anatomy and osteology, of zoogeography, of habit and special function, all of which conspired to furnish his museum mind with encyclopedic knowledge.He did not have to read books to write labels; he turned to his own resourceful observations of a lifetime.Nor should we forget his travels, and many equally original contributions to the cause of conservation of animal life as an important part of his equipment for the Directorship of great museums like the Brooklyn or the American.It was his own original work, too, which fortified his contributions to the New International Encyclopedia and to Champlin's Young Folks' Cyclopedia of Natural History.Altogether he was in great demand as a writer for encyclopedias.The greatest possible monument and demonstration of his rare abilities is his vitalizing work in the Department of Natural History in the Brooklyn Museum.The call to the Directorship of the American Museum of Natural History in the year 1911 put his powers to the highest test.Fortunately he was in fine health and accepted this great task with rare energy and determination.His altogether unique museum training, beginning in Ward's Natural Science Establishment, that fertile mother of great iii iv FOREWORD Museum leaders, soon manifested itself on every side.With the unexpressed Latin motto of his life, Suaviter in modo, fortiter in re, he introduced one reform after another.During the thirteen-year period of his administration he devoted himself especially to the rearrangement of an exhibition of the great collection of the primates, lemurs, monkeys and apes, but above all to the Synoptic Mammal Hall of the classification, habits and outstanding characters of representatives of various orders of mammals.Here, with the aid of William King Gregory and the occasional suggestion of the present writer, he built his most enduring monument, for no one will ever find it necessary or advisable to substantially alter his beautiful and expressive arrangement of the Mammalia and of their characteristic organs.It is a matter of historic justice, therefore, for our Trustees to name this synoptic exhibition Lucas Hall and to associate it perpetually with the name of a man of fine personal character, of quaint and persuasive charm, representative of the finest principles and endowments of the New England character, Henry Farrrietp Ossorn, Castle Rock, Garrison-on-Hudson, December 30, 1932. DEDICATIONTo my colleagues and fellow workers, past and present, those still here and those who have passed into the great beyond, this volume is dedicated in memory of ''the good old times.""God be thanked, whate'er comes after, T have lived and toiled with men.
Source: The Museum eBooks
Authors: Frederic A. Lucas, Henry Fairfield Osborn
Language: English
Subfield: Museology
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W1496743929