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27 Museum Awakenings

Responses to environmental change at the Swedish Museum of Natural History, 1965–2005

Ewa Bergdahl and Anders Houltz

Had museums, like so many of their specimens, failed to adapt, they would be extinct – the dead bones of a former culture.

Donald Squires, Natural Museums and the Community (1973)

Conflicting views on the museum’s role in society and different conceptions of what a museum is and should be hamper museums in their ambitions to articulate and address the issue of climate change in exhibitions. As we intend to show, this dilemma has deep historical roots. This article uses the Swedish Museum of Natural History (SMNH) in Stockholm as a case to discuss the ways in which museums of natural history have responded (or not) to the challenges posed by human impact on environment during the recent decades when environmental questions became a significant topic of political and public debate.1 Has the museum articulated its agency as a creator and conveyer of messages, and to what extent has it included ambiguous and contradictory narratives in its representations? How has the museum positioned itself in current global efforts towards achieving sustainable development and environmental awareness, and how can its positions be understood in a historical and social context?

The SMNH can trace its origin to the 1819 fusion of the zoological collections

of the Royal Academy of Sciences with significant private collections, but we argue that the institution became what can be described as a museum in a modern sense as late as 1965.2 Previously a research institute with an authority based on extensive collections, it then parted from the Academy of Sciences and was confronted by the obligation to actively and seriously communicate and interact with the public.

In this chapter we focus on three exhibition productions over four decades, where the museum has dealt explicitly with environmental issues. The first, Are We Poisoning Nature? (1966), was triggered by Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring, and was the museum’s first real attempt to address current environmental debate topics. It was followed by Sweden Turning Sour (1985), focusing the 1980s debate on acidification. The third exhibition Mission: Climate Earth (opened in 2004, and still standing in 2015), was an early response to the reports on climate change by scientists and environmental activists in the first years of the new millennium.

The environment a political issue

Although we often think of the 1960s as the birth of an environmental consciousness, different aspects of human damage to nature had been discussed since at least the intense industrialization period of the late nineteenth century.3

Sanitary consequences of industrial enterprises, the contamination of streams and water sources and the possibilities to protect nature, in its pristine state, were all discussed, although as separate and mainly local questions. In this, as in other questions, Swedish development followed the pattern of earlier industrialized nations.

With the economic boom and industrial expansion of the post-World War II decades, however, earlier warnings were drowned by the wheels of progress. Swedish industry exported products and raw materials on an unprecedented scale and living standards increased year by year.

Awareness of the limitations of natural resources was weak and so was knowledge about environmental threats, among the general public and politicians

alike.4

When the biologist Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring was published in the United States in September 1962, the impact was immediate. The book became an unexpected bestseller and soon reached an international audience. Chemical pesticides had been celebrated for decades as the final solution to problems ranging from malaria to pine weevils, but Carson turned the negative effects of biocides in industry, farming and forestry into headline news.5

The importance of Carson’s controversial book is well known. A translation into Swedish was published rapidly in March the following year. It sold in large numbers and was discussed in meetings, newspapers and parliamentary debates. In Sweden as well as in other countries it served as an eye-opener to a wide audience – in fact the book received a response in Sweden that exceeded its attention in the United States.6 The emerging environmental movement had found its bible. Carson pointed to the consequences of chlorine, arsenic, strontium and not least DDT, but the Swedish debate instead focused an issue that was not in fact mentioned by Rachel Carson: mercury pollution. The debate about mercury, fueled by Silent Spring, became the breakthrough that ushered in modern Swedish environmental protection.7 Mercury was one of the biocides most frequently used to exterminate vermin in agriculture and forestry, and the issue became a hot political topic for the parliament and government, which had appointed an environmental commission for biological balance in 1960. A few years later, in 1967, this would result in the formation of the governmental department Naturvårdsverket (The Environmental Protection Agency), which meant that environmental issues had been established as a political area in its own right for the first time.

The rise of environmental politics coincided with the emergence of a revised national cultural policy, which strongly emphasized culture as a tool for the development of the welfare state. The cultural program launched in 1961 by the Social Democrat government stated that culture was a democratic right and that the overarching aim of cultural policy was to make culture available to everybody. Art, theatre, music and museum exhibitions were to be distributed to the citizens regardless of geographic or social position. This meant new assignments for existing cultural institutions, among them museums, but also the emergence of new organizations for the distribution of culture. An important

aspect of this was to reach out to children and youth, and museums were conceived of as a resource for schools in social sciences and humanities as well as in the natural sciences.8

Museum crisis

In marked contrast to the old and traditional European natural history museums – founded on collections from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries aimed at scientific, systematic purposes – comparable institutions in the United States had been created with a more explicit aim to address a public audience. The case of SMNH is a good example of both the traditional, European-style outline and, from the 1960s onwards, a gradual reconfiguration influenced by what may be termed the American model.9

In 1916 the museum had left its crammed but centrally located premises in Stockholm for a new, imposing and spacious building north of the city. In doing so, it not only distanced itself from the public in a geographical sense, but it also consolidated its identity as first and foremost a scientific research institution, regardless of the fact that the move also meant ample space for exhibits.10

In the early 1960s, after four decades, the museum was in urgent need of renewal. Still formally a department under the Royal Academy of Sciences, the institution had stagnated to varying degrees in all of its capacities and was hampered by internal conflicts and insufficient funding. The organizational structure from 1916 remained intact and so did, to the most part, the exhibitions.11 The collections on display, as they were characteristically termed, were organized as they had been for nearly half a century, in halls that were unheated and badly lighted. “Don’t forget to bring a torch if you visit the SMNH” the newspaper Stockholms-Tidningen commented tartly in 1961.12 Apart from the annual visits of generations of school classes, the visiting numbers were decreasing during the 1940s and 1950s.13 But also the museum’s scientific activity was showing signs of stagnation. Research in systematics and taxonomy, once the pride of the institution, had by then lost its forefront position to the universities, where the so-called white, or laborative, biology had emerged.14

A state commission on the museum’s future recommended that all research activities should be taken over by the university.15 This deathblow to the institution was narrowly avoided, largely thanks to the undisputed uniqueness of its collections. Instead, a new organization was presented in the summer of 1965, but formulated in a way that was nearly as radical. The existing seven departments (vertebrates, invertebrates, insects, paleozoology, botany, paleobotany and mineralogy) were all merged into one single research department, and, combined with a new “museum department,” responsible for exhibitions and educational activities as well as the administration of the whole organization. Previously, each department had been taking care of its own exhibitions, or collections on display, in addition to its research, and the central administration had been placed at the Academy of Sciences. With the new organization, the museum, with its own board responsible to the Ministry of Education, was once and for all separated from the academy. It can be argued that the reorganization marked the birth of this museum in the modern sense of the word.16

The change of direction clearly echoed the new cultural politics implemented by the Social Democrat government four years earlier. According to its 1965 directives, the museum’s main task was “to promote interest in knowledge of and research concerning the plant and animal world, the structure and history of the earth, and the biology and natural environments of mankind.”17 The assignment was not, in other words, primarily to gather knowledge and conduct research about nature, but to promote interest in these matters. In addition, the interactions of mankind were explicitly mentioned as a responsibility for the museum.

“Are we poisoning nature?”

The topic of the first proper exhibition by the new Museum Department, and indeed by the museum as an autonomous institution, was chosen carefully. It was an indication of direction both to the museum staff, to the research community, to the politicians and, last but not least, to the public. The newly assigned

museum director and head of department, Kjell Engström, and his associate, Tom Lötmarker, had traveled extensively to natural history museums in the United States and were eager to address the public in new and more direct ways.18 The choice to focus the controversial pesticide issue signaled a will to engage in contemporary debate and to take the new museum directives seriously. It also expressed a marked distance to the existing collections on display, which were characterized by a detached positivist scientific position and systematics in a traditional Linnaean sense.19

Figure 27.1 Director Kjell Engström guides visitors in the Are We Poisoning Nature? exhibition, Swedish

Museum of Natural History, 1996. Photo: Swedish Museum of Natural History.

The exhibition dealt with a hot topic, but it also managed to direct attention towards recent research conducted by the museum’s own scientists. A research group focused on biocides had been formed a few years earlier, and its attempts to trace certain biocides in the biological collections of the museum had proved successful beyond expectation. Suddenly the long series of collection specimens gained new relevance, and the results of the research group received attention well outside the research community. Particularly, studies of the spread of mercury in bird populations were groundbreaking and offered important scientific facts to support the prohibition advocates.20 The successful biocide group overshadowed the traditional taxonomists, but it also placed the museum’s research in the center of debate, conveniently aided by the new exhibition.

Are We Poisoning Nature? opened in May 1966 and was the first exhibition ever on environmental questions, not only at the SMNH but in Sweden as a whole. It was a low-budget production, funded within the regular museum budget, with a small contribution from the Museum Friends Association. It consisted of some thirty numbered screens with text and illustrations, but very few displayed objects. The simple production was convenient for transportation, and the exhibition went on a successful tour for a number of years after it had been displayed at the museum.21

Public and media attention was considerable, and the exhibition was commented on in several newspapers. Sweden’s most prominent daily, Dagens Nyheter, stated that the exhibition “shows the complicated dilemma caused by the biocides through partly frightening examples, but does not provide conclusive answers about the extent of damage caused by the uses of toxic substances.”22

The Svenska Dagbladet went further and criticized the question mark of the exhibition title for its “remarkable caution.” since the fact that biocides do damage nature was beyond doubt.23

An examination of the content gives some support to this critique. The exhibition message was somewhat ambiguous; the texts raised plenty of questions and provided generous amounts of facts and statistics, but avoided making conclusions and formulating critical allegations. It was left to the visitors to draw their own conclusions. The exhibition content rested largely on the authority of the museum’s own research, for instance in its thorough display of the effects of mercury emissions on birds. The presence of another authority was apparent: the two final panels of the exhibition were devoted to an homage to Rachel Carson (who had passed away in 1964) and her writings, displaying a portrait of the author as well as several editions of Silent Spring.

The debates on pesticides had considerable effects during the late 1960s. One substance after another was limited or prohibited: mercury, DDT, PCB and cadmium. While Are We Poisoning Nature? was on tour, museum staff made efforts to keep its content updated about ongoing developments. Somewhat unexpectedly, the museum found itself in the midst of an emerging popular movement, strongly connected to the 1960s radicalism. The earlier environmental debate had been mostly academic, and narrowly focused on preserving nature intact. In the 1960s, awareness about the interplay between humans and the

environment increased; humans entered the equation not just as agents, threatening or saving nature, but also as potential victims. The environmental movement engaged young activists who used demonstrations and radical methods beyond the bounds of the parliamentary system.24 In this context, Are We Poisoning Nature? held a modest standpoint indeed, but it was backed by the acknowledged expert authority of the museum, which made it hard to ignore.

“Sweden turning sour”

Are We Poisoning Nature? had been a success, and paved the way for the production of other temporary and traveling exhibitions at the SMNH. In part, this strategy served to conceal the fact that the efforts to renew the permanent exhibitions – to replace the collections on display with thematic basic exhibits – had turned out to be a slow and difficult process. This was mainly due to the acute pervasive needs of renovation of the interiors, which meant a considerable state investment. The financial problem was finally solved in 1984. After twenty years of annual requests, the renovation of the interiors started.25 But the renewal plans also roused disputes on what the content and messages of such exhibitions should actually be, and the question was further complicated by upset reactions against the dismantling of the old displays. In a letter to the museum in 1986, even the National Board of Antiquities criticized the dismantling of the displays from 1916 on heritage grounds: “The display cases are original to the buildings and their open, slender construction is in natural unity with the set interior architecture.”26

At the same time, and two decades after the previous occasion, the museum once more engaged in an exhibition dealing explicitly with environmental issues.27 Sweden Turning Sour (Sverige surnar till), which opened in 1985, was not exclusively produced by the SMNH, but involved about twenty independent or governmental organizations. The production was coordinated by the relatively small museum of forestry in Gävle, Silvanum, tightly connected to the forest industry. This, too, was a traveling exhibition, but it did not commence in Stockholm but rather on a large hunting and fishing fair in the city of Jönköping,

and was displayed at the SMNH in February the following year.28

The situation had changed in many ways since the 1960s. The environmental movement had broadened its scope, and gained increasing support across the political spectrum. Popular resistance against nuclear power had decided the outcome of the general elections in 1976, replacing the Social Democrat government with a coalition led by the Centre Party, which was strongly profiled towards environmental issues. A 1980 referendum over the nuclear issue resulted in a compromise, stating a gradual out-phasing of Swedish nuclear power, and the next year a new political party, the Swedish Green Party, entered the scene. Sweden Turning Sour focused on another dominant environmental issue of the

early and mid-1980s besides nuclear power – the acidification of land and water. Compared to the pesticide debates of the 1960s, acidification was a more distinctly international issue, since pollution and industrial emissions are transported over vast distances without regard to national borders. The concerns about acidification certainly had to do with domestic industry, but much of the attention was directed towards the effects of industries abroad on nature in Sweden. Heavy industries in the Eastern-bloc countries and coal plants in Germany featured as major threats in the debate.

This perspective was clearly present in the exhibition, where the symbolic Mother Svea, draped in the national colors, blue and yellow, was suffering from pollution and turning gradually more sour. A map showed arrows of pollution invading the Swedish borders from all sides, but only a few arrows illustrated the effects of Swedish emissions on the neighboring countries. Acidification was presented as an international problem, but from a national perspective.

The exhibition coincided with the 1987 publication of the Brundtland Report, Our Common Future, from the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED). The report established the expression “sustainable development.” and its targets were environmental multilateralism and the interdependence of nations. However, in comparison to the Brundtland Report, Sweden Turning Sour expressed a “one-way version” of the multilateral perspective.

The exhibition consisted mainly of a series of screens, but this time with some displayed objects and some props, most notably the sectioned body of a rusty car, registration number SUR 085. The color scheme was blue and yellow, to connect

to the Swedish flag. The expertise of SMNH did not play a central role – as could be expected in a cooperation project involving several actors.

Figure 27.2 Flag poster, Sweden Turning Sour exhibition, Swedish Museum of Natural History, 1987. The

colors of the Swedish flag (blue and yellow) influenced the exhibition design. Photo: Swedish Museum of

Natural History.

The main actor in the exhibition narrative was industry, both as the cause of the problem and as the provider of possible solutions. Industry was also present as a contributor in a material sense; the project was funded by all of the involved organizations, but also through sponsoring. Under the headline “There are possibilities,” the sponsoring companies were given space to present their various technological solutions to acidification. The message of the exhibition as a whole was rather shattered, reflecting the many different voices, and the response in mass media was limited. In April 1986 the Chernobyl nuclear accident in Ukraine occurred, and all media and political attention was once more directed towards nuclear hazards. Both the debate on acidification and the exhibition, still traveling from one location to another, were drowned in the nuclear flood.

Mission: Climate Earth

In 2002, the museum started planning the exhibition Mission: Climate Earth (Uppdrag: KLIMAT), its third major exhibition on environment. In contrast to its predecessors, this was not a traveling exhibition; new political goals for culture placed less emphasis on outreach to various groups of the population and this meant less interest in traveling exhibitions. Mission: Climate Earth was planned as a temporary exhibition but was later incorporated among the permanent exhibitions of the museum.29

The exhibition was conceived of at a stage when public awareness about the climate issue was still limited and the scientific debate between protagonists and skeptics still active. This was the first exhibition ever in Sweden on climate change, and internationally an early attempt to grasp the climate issue in a museum context. This placed the museum in a somewhat awkward position, since it meant taking a stand in what was then still an unresolved scientific controversy. Furthermore, to deal with the climate issue, the museum was largely

Figure 27.3 A poster presenting the Mission: Climate Earth exhibition, showing well-known Stockholm

locations flooded by high waters, Swedish Museum of Natural History, 2014. Photo: Ewa Bergdahl. See Plate

31.

dependent on the authority of external scientists. While Are We Poisoning Nature? had been safely supported by the results of the museum staff researchers, there was no comparable inhouse expertise to rely on this time.30

The decisive factor for the project’s realization was probably the fact that it was initiated by the museum board chairman, the politician Anders Wijkman, a Christian Democrat strongly engaged in environmental policy questions. The solution to the potential credibility dilemma was to tie the exhibition message to the authority of the Third Assessment Report from The United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), published in 2001, the year

before the exhibition plans were launched. Making the connection to the IPCC report explicit was also a firm condition in order to gain the support of the National Environmental Protection. Thus, the report was used as a fundamental authority comparable to Rachel Carson’s book four decades earlier. A scientific reference group was organized with members from the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, the Environmental Protection Agency, the World Wildlife Foundation and Stockholm University.31 Still, in comparison to the report, the exhibition went one step further. While the IPCC stated that, “most of the observed warming is likely (greater than 66 percent probability, based on expert judgment) due to human activities,” the exhibition presented human impact on climate change as a given fact.32

The exhibition was inaugurated in September 2004.33 It was prominently located in one of the halls opening from the museum entrance vestibule. Much of the content was devoted to explaining what climate is and the mechanisms affecting weather conditions. Meteorology was central to the narrative, but space was also devoted to effects of climate change on human conditions, by, for instance, comparing the ecological footprints of a teenage girl in Cambodia with one in Sweden. The perspective of the exhibition was global, placing the future of the local or national society in relation to that of the whole planet. In one of the interactive stations, visitors were invited to “create their own clouds” by letting off steam through a hand-operated device – a subtle argument for the anthropogenic character of climate and weather conditions.

The exhibition team aimed to avoid “doomsday prophesies,” to remain on firm, scientific ground and deliver the message that human action can make significant change.34 This urge for action was a central theme, not least expressed in the exhibition title, Mission: Climate Earth. On the other hand, the exhibition’s central feature was a spectacular film display named “The eye of the storm” (Stormens öga). The display, which showed dramatic weather sequences and devastating scenarios using strong visual, audio effects, and even a wind-machine to give the impression of storm, appealed more to the visitors’ feelings than their intellect.

Figure 27.4 Create your own cloud interactive in the Mission: Climate Earth exhibition, Swedish Museum of

Natural History, 2004. Photo: Mikael Axelsson, SMNH. See Plate 32.

The ambivalence between keeping a moderate and trustworthy tone on the one side and the need to communicate the urgency of the situation through spectacular displays on the other was clearly noticeable. The newspaper Aftonbladet commented the displays: “Through interactive computer stations and dystopian texts (‘present day climate change may be the gentle beginnings of a major change in a hundred years’) the exhibition tries to frighten visitors into action, as it seems.”35

The ambitions of the marketing division of the museum to produce effective and eye-catching promotion also came into conflict with the moderate ambitions of the exhibition producers, resulting in an advertising campaign where well-

known Stockholm locations were flooded by high waters. Similarly, the exhibition team were upset when one of the major sponsors, the local traffic company SL, placed a fake bus shelter demolished by ice at the bus stop near the museum entrance.36 Mission: Climate Earth has slowly been incorporated in the permanent range of exhibitions and can still be visited in 2016.

Conclusions

Temporary exhibitions like the ones discussed in this chapter stand out in contrast to the museum’s major permanent exhibitions, which were gradually modernized both in design and content from the mid-1980s. The first one to open was Polar Regions in 1989, followed by 4½ Billion Years – The History of Life and Earth in 1996, and Life in Water in 1997. While the temporary exhibitions have been clearly polemical about controversial topics, the permanent exhibitions, striving for objective timelessness, have largely failed to articulate their debt to contemporary issues. For instance, the 1989 polar exhibition emphasized the problems of whaling and seal hunting, which was a hot political topic at the time both in Sweden and internationally, but this theme was downplayed in later versions.

All three temporary exhibitions are characterized by a direct address towards the visitor by using the word “we” in the texts and including the visitor in the story. A good example is Are We Poisoning Nature?, where even the title uses this mode, in marked contrast to the permanent exhibitions, where such formulations are avoided. In the temporary exhibitions, humans are very clearly presented as actors and the interplay between man and nature is accentuated. This, again, is in contrast to the permanent exhibitions, which are less articulate about human agency and yet somehow still rest on the traditional notions of human superiority over nature.

Additionally, even though the three exhibitions stress the importance and sometimes harmful consequences of human actions, they do not dare to question the current political system. They advocate improvements within the system but not radical changes of it. The exhibitions identify important and current problems

without designating any villains or blaming anybody. Causes are described but presented in a neutral way.

SMNH is the biggest museum and one of the largest research environments of natural sciences in Sweden. However, the relationship between the exhibition activities and the research has always been complicated. In the 1960s, the museum had the precedence of interpretation by right of its research profile. In the 1980s by contrast, environmental issues had become established in public discussions and involved numerous actors and authorities, and this development has constantly increased since then. A gradual change in this respect is notable in the three exhibitions. The first one was almost entirely based on the results of the museum’s research staff. It dealt with a limited number of pesticides and their consequences and was more easily correlated to the current research at the museum. A development where environmental issues have become more complex and interdisciplinary-dependent made it impossible to cover the whole problem, which was apparent in both of the later exhibitions.

Another gradual change can be noticed in the way in which the exhibitions have been funded. There is a clear development from simple productions, financed by the museum’s own means, to more elaborate and expensive projects, funded by external sponsors. The attitude towards private sponsoring changed radically during the 1980s and 1990s and opened new funding opportunities, but it is also obvious in the two later exhibitions that the economic contributions have affected the contents in various ways. This is evident, for example, in the large space given to the sponsors, presenting their technical solutions and products.

A clear shift in geographical perspective is noticeable, from a local view on environ mental issues in Are We Poisoning Nature?, to a widening view with a more national touch in Sweden Turning Sour and finally, in Mission: Climate Earth, to a totally global perspective on the environment problem. These changes correspond to the different contents of the exhibitions, from place-bound pesticide deposits, to far-reaching air pollution, to the global effects of the climate changes of today. But the change also reflects the transformation of the world and how we understand it into a more global community where mankind has been given the opportunities to grasp the whole globe and been exposed to the complexity of the current existence.

Dealing with the Anthropocene period poses new challenges to the exhibition media. A simplified evolutionary perspective is no longer sufficient, since humans have changed the rules of existence. The continuity of evolution is no longer the one and only model of explanation. Creating an exhibition today about the climate changes in the world requires embracing discontinuity, as well as bringing together a holistic and system-critical approach throughout, and dealing with the role of humans as the earth’s totally predominant species.

Notes

1 Peter Davis, Museums and the Natural Environment: The Role of Natural History Museums in Biological

Conservation (University of Leicester Press, 1996), 41–43.

2 For the early history of SMNH see Gunnar Broberg, 1989; Gunnar Brusewitz, 1989; Naturhistoriska

riksmuseets historia, 1916.

3 Sverker Sörlin, Naturkontraktet. Om naturumgängets idéhistoria (Stockholm: Carlssons förlag, 1991), 174.

4 Ibid., 180.

5 Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1962), 13–32.

6 Andrew Jamison, “The Making of the New Environmentalism in Sweden,” in The Making Of The New

Environmental Consciousness: A Comparative Study of the Environmental Movements In Sweden,

Denmark, And the Netherlands, ed. by Andrew Jamison et al. (Edinburgh University Press, 1990), 13–65.

7 Lars J. Lundgren, “Miljöpolitiken,” in Vad staten vill: Mål och ambitioner i svensk politik, ed. Daniel

Tarschys and Marja Lemne (Hedemora: Gidlunds förlag, 2013), 285.

8 Helene Broms and Anders Göransson, Kultur i rörelse: En historia om riksutställningar och

kulturpolitiken (Stockholm: Bokförlaget Atlas, 2012), 18–20.

9 Wolfgang Clausewitz, “Natural History Museums and the Public – a Critical Situation in Europe,” in

Natural History Museums and the Community, ed. by Kjell Engström and Alf Johnels, (Oslo:

Universitetsförlaget, 1973), 43–47.

10 Jenny Beckman, Naturens Palats: Nybyggnad, vetenskap och utställning vid Naturhistoriska riksmuseet

1866–1925 (Stockholm: Atlantis, 1999), 214–219.

11 Engström, I väntan på något bättre, 31–40.

12 “Museum i skumrask,” Stockholms-Tidningen 1961-11-13.

13 Annual Museum Reports of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, 1940–1959.

14 Bergdahl, Interview with Kjell Engström, October 23, 2012.

15 Tunlid, Riksmuseiutredningen, Naturhistoriska riksmuseets framtida ställning och organisation, 112.

16 Tony Bennett, The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics (London: Routledge, 1995), 25–33.

17 Kjell Engström, “Aims of the Exhibition and Education Activities at the Museum of Natural History,” in

Natural History Museums and the Community, ed. by Kjell Enström and Alf Johnels (Oslo:

Universitetsförlaget, 1973), 104.

18 Bergdahl, Interview with Kjell Engström, September 12, 2012.

19 Bengt Hubendick, “Gammalt och nytt inom biologin,” Göteborgs Handels- och Sjöfartstidning, 1964–12–

14.

20 Alf Johnels, “Natural History Museum Collections: A Basis for Future Research,” in Natural History

Museums and the Community, ed. by Kjell Engström and Alf Johnels (Oslo: Universitetsförlaget, 1973),

48–58.

21 The travelling exhibition was attended by ca 160 000 visitors during nearly five years. Engström,

“Museum I skumrask… ” 22.

22 Dagens Nyheter, May 20, 1966, www.dn.se/.

23 “Expo på Naturhistoriska…,” Svenska Dagbladet, May 22, 1966, www.svd.se/.

24 Urban Emanuelsson, Ett sekel av svensk naturvård, Nationalencyklopedin, 2009. Visited May 26, 2013

www.ne.se/static

25 The Government Budget for 1986 designated 50 million kronor during five years for renewal of the

SMNH exhibitions; Ewa Bergdahl, Naturhistoriska riksmuseet utställningsverksamhet 1965–1933,

internal PM number 10, SMNH April 4, 2013 (unpublished), 27.

26 Ibid, 27.

27 Other exhibitions had dealt with environmental issues, but as one theme among several.

28 Bo Thunberg ed., Sverige Surnar Till: En fakta-och idétidning till vandringsutställningen (Stockholm,

1985) 1–31.

29 Bergdahl/Houltz, interview with Claes Enger, SNMH, November 25, 2013.

30 Interview with Stefan Claesson, SNMH, November 25, 2013.

31 Uppdrag: KLIMAT: En utställningskatalog i samarbete mellan Forskning & Framsteg och Naturhistoriska

riksmuseet, Stockholm, 2004, 4.

32 IPCC, Third Assessment Report (TAR), 2001. Later IPCC reports confirm the connection between human

agency and climate change more directly.

33 For an interesting analysis, see Anna Samuelsson, “I naturens teater: Kultur – och miljösociologiska

analyser av naturhistoriska utställningar och filmer” (diss., Uppsala University, 2008), 230–268.

34 Interview with Claes Enger, SMNH, November 25, 2013.

35 Peter Lindgren, “Vilka Minnen ger vi Barnen?” Aftonbladet, March 31, 2005.

www.aftonbladet.se/kultur/huvudartikel/article10569608.ab/

36 Bergdahl/Houltz, interview with Claes Enger, SMNH, November 25, 2013.