All posts by Nathalie Richard

Maulny and Le Mans: one of a thousand ways of moving from the cabinet of curiosities to the natural history museum

By José Pardo-Tomás, Institución Milá y Fontanals-Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas

Louis-Jean-Charles Maulny (1758-1815) was a lawyer, naturalist and collector from Le Mans, owner of a cabinet of curiosities, whose collections were acquired after his death (1816) by the town’s museum, created in 1799 (fig. 1). A substantial part of the natural history specimens and objects from Maulny’s cabinet are now kept in the Musée Vert (Natural History Museum of Le Mans), while some archaeological and antiquities pieces are kept in the history and archaeology museum called Musée Jean Claude Boulard-Carré Plantagenêt.

However, the future project for the municipal museums of Le Mans envisages the reunification of the archaeological-historical and naturalistic collections of the city, so somehow Maulny will see what remains of the collections of what was once his cabinet of curiosities reintegrated into a single exhibition. Thanks to the excellent hosting of Nicolas Morel, always willing to act as an attentive mediator, I had the opportunity to talk to some of the people involved in this new museum project, including Morel himself. Everything seems to indicate that the challenge of reuniting these municipal museums will produce interesting results, both in terms of Museology and historical research in cultural heritage and scientific collecting.

Fig. 1 Louis Maulny. The allegory produced in 1832 showing him as a naturalist sheds light on the particular interpretation of his figure for posterity [Le Mans, Mediathèque Aragon, Fonds Sciences et Arts]

Louis Maulny was the great-grandson of a master apothecary, François Maulny, active in the second half of the 17th century; his grandfather and his father left this guild and artisan, albeit wealthy, estate to study law and rise to the so-called provincial noblesse de robe which opened the doors of the institutions of local government to them as “conseillers du roi au siège présidial du Mans”. Coming from this social status, Louis acquired his first education in his home town with the Oratorians, who gave him his first informal introduction to botany and zoology. Then he was sent to study law in Toulouse; but there he devoted himself more eagerly to the collection of minerals and the study of natural history than to the laws of an Ancien Régime which had very little left of their validity.

His family’s more than comfortable position allowed him to develop his collector’s passion. However, from the age of thirty and for the twenty-six years that remained of his life, Maulny had to live through the turbulent years between the French Revolution and the Bourbon Restoration. Maulny was able to navigate with great skill amidst the political changes and the violent clashes between royalists and revolutionaries, between republicans themselves, between opponents and those convinced (or resigned) to the Bonapartist rise and, finally, the pro-Bourbon conspirators supported by all the European powers. His presence was continuous among the advisors and experts at La Sarthe appointed by the always changing central power in Paris to participate in the rescue of artistic and cultural property expropriated from aristocrats and ecclesiastics or saved from the destruction and pillage of the riots and uprisings thanks to the nationalisation decreed by the republican authorities. So, it is not difficult to understand that he took advantage of the situation to enhance his own collections. As Marianne Thauré wrote in 1999, referring to Maulny: “It is therefore very difficult to reconcile the goodwill of the naturalist, the passion of the collector and the exaltation of the citizen proud of his mission”.

Among the numerous objects of all kinds that Maulny had collected during his lifetime and which at his death passed – through purchase – to swell the public heritage of his city, there were paintings, sculptures, coins, medals, minerals, fossils, stuffed animals and “curiosities”, specimens from the three kingdoms of nature which, because of their provenance, their appearance or their essence, he had deemed worthy of being kept among his treasures.

Fig. 2 Cover of the “Catalogue raisonné of the natural curiosities that make up Monsieur Maulny’s cabinet” drawn up by him in 1806 [Le Mans, Mediathèque Aragon, Fonds Sciences et Arts]

Subsequently, the municipal authorities and their expert consultants decided to divide the city’s public collections into different sections, creating one devoted to the fine arts, another to archaeology and a third devoted to natural history, which was largely forgotten during a long period of “artist” directors and curators. Such a division, carried out according to an economy of knowledge and disciplinary taxonomies, no longer belonged to Maulny’s time, but to those who came after him. These were times in which an exhibition regime typical of nineteenth-century museums triumphed, which – although its antecedents can be traced back to the turbulent years of the end of the Ancien Régime – would take shape in the second half of the century and would last until at least the Interwar period. In short, an exhibition regime which – like all of them – was marked by a certain normativity in its relationship with the public, a scale of prestige for the different disciplines and conditions for the production of knowledge that bore little resemblance to those Maulny knew during his lifetime.

The vicissitudes of Maulny’s cabinet, as far as natural history is concerned, show us – once again – that there was no linear and univocal transition from cabinets of curiosities to natural history museums, despite what the official narrative of history of many European and American museums continues to claim. As usual, history is more complex and therefore much more interesting. There were a thousand and one ways of forming a museum and a thousand and one ways of ending up with a cabinet of curiosities. And almost none of them move from one to the other in a simple or inevitable way.

The collections that today make up the Musée Vert in Le Mans are an eloquent example of this. And the pieces that come from Louis Maulny’s former cabinet of curiosities are no less eloquent a case of how there are many ways to get to a natural history museum from a cabinet of curiosities.

Bibliography

Paul Delaunay, “Louis Maulny, naturaliste et collectionneur (1758-1815). Ses amis, son temps, ses successeurs”, Bulletin de la Société d’agriculture, sciences et arts de la Sarthe, 60, 1945: 1-132.

Déborah Dubald, Capital nature: a history of French municipal museums of natural history, 1795-1870, Florence, European University Institute PhD theses, 2019.

Ambroise Gentil, “Louis Maulny, naturaliste manceau”, Bulletin de la Société d’agriculture, sciences et arts de la Sarthe, 35, 1912: 293-308.

Pierre‐Yves Lacour, La République naturaliste. Collections d’histoire naturelle et Révolution française (1789‐1804), Paris, Publications scientifiques du Muséum d’Histoire naturelle, 2014.

The pursuit of interesting specimens in the LMS herbarium

By Neus Nualart, Museu Ciencies Naturals Barcelona (Institut Botànic de Barcelona)

LMS is the acronym of a large collection of 100,000 plant specimens preserved in the reserves of Le Musée Vert of Le Mans (Fig. 1). As its curator, Nicolas Morel, explains to me, the main part of the herbarium contains plants collected in the Sarthe region by local botanists. In 2017 the catalogue of all the collections from the Sarthe region was published with a description of each collection (more information of this project is available online, HerbEnLoire). According to this catalogue there are 65 herbarium collections preserved in Le Musée Vert with plants collected between the 18th and 20th centuries. The largest collection is the one of Monguillon with 17,150 specimens of cryptogam plants which was, in part, studied by my colleague Neus Ibáñez during her stay in Le Mans (a report is available in the SciCoMove blog).

Figure 1. Reserves of Le Musée Vert where the herbarium collections are conserved. © Le Musée Vert

Since one of my research fields is the nomenclature of plants and the typification of new names (to stabilize their interpretation), I was interested in finding some original material in LMS herbarium. In one of my visits to the reserves, two post-it notes included in the Chevallier collection with the indication of type material caught my attention (Fig. 2). Nicolas Morel told me that they were duplicates of specimens of the National Museum of Paris where the holotypes (original material used by an author to describe a new taxon) were preserved. This collection was formed by a bundle of 107 specimens collected between 1898 and 1904 in Algeria. My interest of North African plants encouraged me to learn more about this author and the taxa he published.

Figure 2. Chevallier collection with post-it notes indicating the existence of type material. © Le Musée Vert

Louis Pierre Désiré Chevallier (Melicorne, Sarthe, 1852–Précigné, Sarthe, 1938) was a French clergyman and botanist who worked as a professor. Although his main herbarium was from plants collected in Sarthe, his naturalist interests and his curiosity for the exploration brought him to study the flora of Algeria, a French colony in that time, where he carried out different trips between 1879 and 1904 (Fig. 3). During all his life he collected 50,000 specimens in a herbarium organized in more than 600 volumes. According to the African Plant Database (https://africanplantdatabase.ch/) he proposed ca. 30 new taxa including species, subspecies and varieties. He published three notes about Saharan Flora in 1900, 1903 and 1905 explaining the trips and describing the new taxa he found. He also created an exsiccata to distribute 650 plants in different herbaria and botanists from the entire world, the “Plantae Saharae-algeriensis”.

Figure 3. Chevallier in Ouargla (Algeria) preparing plants for his herbarium collection. Extracted from a La province du Maine 19 (1939) p. 61. © Archives départementales de la Sarthe

Two specimens labeled as types corresponds to Helianthemum brachypodum that was described by Chevallier in page 767 of his “Deuxième note sur la Flore du Sahara” (Chevallier, 1903) but without mentioning any locality or date. In page 678 he explained that he found this new species in Oum-el-Klab on 19th March 1902. In JSTOR portal web (https://plants.jstor.org/) there are many specimens indicated as type or original material tough collected in 1904; they were distributed by Chevallier in the exsiccate “Plantae Saharae-algeriensis” with the number 543. Only two specimens in JSTOR are actually the original material collected in 1902 (P00086041, P00086042) and preserved in the National Museum of Paris. Both are part of a single collection, one bearing the original label handwritten by Chevallier (Fig. 4) and the other with a transcription of this original one.

Figure 4. Label handwritten by Chevallier of the specimen preserved in P herbarium of Helianthemum brachypodum. @ MNHN Paris

The two specimens conserved in Le Musée Vert were also handwritten by Chevallier and were collected in Oum-el-Klab on 19th March 1902 (Fig. 5). It is surprising to me that these specimens have less information than the ones preserved in P herbarium, maybe because the former remained in Chevalier’s personal collection for a long time.

Figure 5. Label of the specimen preserved in Le Musée Vert that can be considered original material of Helianthemum brachypodium. © Le Musée Vert

The other specimen labeled as type corresponds to Salvia pseudojaminiana, which was described by Chevallier from Hadadra and collected on 10th April 1904 (Chevallier, 1905). This specimen was distributed in the exsiccate “Plantae Saharae-algeriensis” with the number 602 as it is indicated in the original publication (Fig. 6).

Figure 6. Original description of Salvia pseudojaminiana with the locality, date and exsiccate number of the original material used to describe this new species. Extracted from Chevallier (1905) p. 442. © Biodiversity Heritage Library

In JSTOR portal web (https://plants.jstor.org/) there are different specimens indicated as original material and preserved in Jena (Germany), Leiden (the Netherlands), Madrid (Spain), Montpellier (France), Washington (USA) and Melbourne (Australia); all of them bear the label of the exsiccate, either handwritten or typewritten (Fig. 7).

Figure 7. Typewritten label of the specimen distributed by Chevallier in the exsiccate “Plantae Saharae algeriensis” with number 602. © MPU herbarium (Montpellier)

In contrast, the specimen preserved in Le Musée Vert of Salvia pseudojaminiana has a handwritten label with only some information about the locality and the date of collection (Fig. 8). As in the case of the original specimen of Helianthemum brachypodum it seems that this specimen was included in his personal collection.

Figure 8. Label of the specimen preserved in Le Musée Vert that can be considered original material of Salvia pseudojaminiana. © Le Musée Vert

A review of all 107 specimens that compose the Chevallier collection of Le Musée Vert has allowed me to find some original material of some varieties described by this author in Algeria. Six specimens are type material of the following names: Artemisia judaica var. sahariensis, Chrysanthemum macrocarpum var. aureum, Fagonia latifolia var. pinguis, Lippia nodiflora var. suborbicularis, Mentha rotundifolia var. longispicata, and Retama raetam var. pallens.

Although none of these names are accepted today (except Salvia pseudojaminiana), their study is necessary to improve the knowledge about the taxonomy of Algerian plants. Moreover, none of the names proposed by Chevallier for Algerian plants have been studied yet from a typification point of view. Therefore, all original material of this author is important to understand his interpretation for the new taxa he described. In short, the material found in Le Musée Vert can be of great interest of taxonomists interested in North African flora.

References

Chevallier, L. 1903. Deuxième note sur la flora du Sahara. Bull. Herb. Boiss., sér. 2, 3: 669–684. 

Chevallier, L. 1905. Troisième note sur la flora du Sahara. Bull. Herb. Boiss., sér. 2, 5: 440–444. 

Introducing SciCoMove in Palma, Mallorca

Aina Trias – Verbeeck, José Pardo – Tomás, Institució Milà i Fontanals – CSIC, Barcelona

This past Friday, November 18th the Catalan Society for the History of Science and Technique held its biannual conference in the city of Palma, in Mallorca. The meeting took place in an old building, now hosting courses form the Universitat de les Illes Balears, but formerly part of a big architectonic unit built in the early 1900’s to host several cultural and education institutions of the island.

This eclectic style complex was constructed upon the new gained ground resulting from the deviation of a water stream which gives it name: Sa Riera (The Torrent). Besides the university area, the same building still hosts the Balearic Art and Design school and the Ramon Llull high school, successor of one of the pioneer secondary schools of the country. Inside, ancient scientific collections of botany, zoology, mineralogy, physics, meteorology and chemistry -including pedagogical models, instruments and apparatus- are preserved and displayed in classrooms and laboratories that still retain the atmosphere and furnishings of more than a century ago.

Such a special place welcomed a heterogeneous group of a hundred people (historians, mathematicians, biologists, physicists, philosophers, among others) presenting the results of their research, publications, and individual or collective projects related to the history of science, medicine and technology.

One of the sessions was dedicated to “Spaces, museums and material culture of science”, organised by José Pardo-Tomás. The presentations focused on two study cases: the retrieval of the pharmaceutical spaces and objects at the Militar Hospital built in the XVIII by the British army on a tiny island called Illa del Rei (The King’s Island) in the natural harbour of Maó (Minorca) and the research lines about the cabinet of curiosities of the Salvador family in Barcelona developed by SciCoMove researchers and colleagues.

In this framework, the Scientific Collections on the Move project was presented to the attendees as a work in progress example of the importance of networking and connecting histories, places, persons and things circulating and constructing knowledge, in the past and nowadays.

Being it a reunion of a local society on an even more local and peripheral place as an island, the project aroused enthusiasm and interest among the public.

Herbarium specimens exchange network at the end of the 19th century: the case of Frederic Trèmols

By Laura Gavioli, Museu de Ciències Naturals de Barcelona (Institut Botànic de Barcelona), University of Barcelona.

During my visit at the herbarium of the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle (P) I was able to find a good number of specimens collected by Frederic Trèmols (Cadaqués 1831–1900). Trèmols was professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Barcelona, and also pharmacist and botanist. He was member of important scientific organizations, including the Real Acadèmia de Ciències i Arts de Barcelona, the Société Botanique de France (of which he was also president between 1880 and 1885), and the Société Helvétique pour l’Échange des Plantes. He played a prominent role in the Societat Botànica Barcelonesa, being its secretary from its creation until the cessation of activities (1872–1878). As a botanist, his masterpiece was an herbarium of 12,951 specimens that he completed thanks to his own collections and the contributions of international botanists and botanical societies with which he collaborated. This herbarium, kept at the Botanical Institute of Barcelona, is one of the first herbaria in Catalonia, largely made up of European plants.

Below you will find the botanists who caused the dispersal of Trèmols specimens in different parts of Europe although, nowadays, all of them are again reunited in the P herbarium. For each author different information is given: (i) a brief biographical note, (ii) data about their relationships with Trèmols and, whenever possible, (iii) an explanation of how the samples of the Catalan botanist arrived in their herbaria. To undersand the relationships between each author and Trèmols, I did a search in the Trèmols herbarium looking for samples of these authors. As a result, I am providing all the specimens collected for each author that are preserved in this collection. The aspect I want to highlight is whether there were direct exchanges between Trèmols and these botanists or, alternatively, whether the sending of plants took place through exchange companies.

Claude Albert Gérard (Vittel 1837–Thonon-les-Bains 1904) worked like Conservator des Hypothèques and, as a botanist, he mainly dealt with phanerogams, cryptogams and fungi. He collected mainly in eastern France and in Haute-Savoie, Ardennes and Bretagne assembling an herbarium of over 10,000 specimens. His herbarium, or at least parts of it, was sold in 1935 by Jean Auguste Ambroise Callé (1906–1981) to Bernard Guy Gaston Baron de Retz de Serviès (1910–2004), but it is unknown how J. Callé came into possession of the Gérard herbarium.

In the Trèmols herbarium we find 36 specimens collected by Gérard: 20 specimens that arrived directly by him, and 16 that arrived through plant exchange societies (mainly the Société Helvétique).

Sébastien René Lenormand (Condé-sur-Noireau 1796–Saint-Germain-de-Tallevende 1871) was a French lawyer, sub-prefect of Vire, and an amateur botanist who specialized in the field of phycology. Without ever leaving France he created a herbarium mainly composed of algae species, with a large number of specimens from botanists-travellers around the world. His herbarium was donated to Caen Botanical Garden, and it still survives despite the damage it suffered following the Allied bombings of 1944.

There is no sample collected by Lenormand in the Trèmols herbarium because the years of activity of both botanists only partially overlapped while they interests were different (algae for Lenormand and higher plants for Trèmols). It is likely that the Trèmols specimens arrived to Lenormand through Henry van Heurck, a Belgian botanist who sent and received herbarium samples from all over the world, and who was correspondent for both of them.

Hector Léveillé (Le Mans 1864–1918) was clergyman and botanist, and member of the Missions étrangères of Paris. In 1887 he travelled to India where he became a specialist in the flora of the Far East, mainly China and Korea. In 1891 he returned to Le Mans where he founded the magazine Le Monde des Plantes and the society Académie Internationale de Géographie Botanique of which he became the secretary and director of its journal Bulletin de Géographie Botanique. He also founded the Association Française de Botaniques with Georges Rouy. His remarkable herbarium was acquired by George Forrest, a collector in Yunnan of China, and subsequently by the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh.

Although there are no specimens collected by Léveillé in the Trèmols herbarium, we know that the two botanists were in correspondence thanks to two letters sent in 1895 by Trèmols to Rouy (manuscripts Ms 2617 / 592 preserved in the Correspondance scientifique de Georges Rouy collection of the library of the National Museum of Natural History of Paris). In these two letters Trèmols explains that he is arranging the acceptance of the two French botanists as members of the Reial Acadèmia de Ciències i Arts de Barcelona and that he will send specimens to the Académie Internationale de Géographie Botanique. This fact explains the presence of specimens collected by Trèmols in the Léveillé herbarium, while the absence of specimens collected by Léveillé in Trèmols herbarium can be thought of as non-reciprocity of these shipments.

Emmanuel Drake del Castillo (Paris 1855–Saint-Cyran-du-Jambot 1904) was the heir of a very rich family, and he devoted himself to botany. From 1884 until his death, he was the mayor of Saint-Cyran-du-Jambot. He studied the flora of Madagascar and created an herbarium of more than 500,000 specimens, which his widow donated to the National Museum of Natural History of Paris. He was president of the Société Botanique de France in the year 1900.

There are no specimens of Drake in the Trèmols herbarium; therefore, they did not exchange plants directly and the Trèmols specimens arrived in Drake herbarium through other botanists such as Rouy or van Heurck.

Eugène-Laurent Berher (Épinal 1822–1900) was doctor, botanist and bryologist in Épinal and he specialized in vascular plants, mosses and lichens. He mainly collected in the Vosges department and published a catalogue of vascular plants and one of the liverworts and mosses of Alsace.

In the Trèmols herbarium there are 52 specimens collected by Berher, mainly coming from the Société Helvétique, just like the specimes of Trèmols preserved in Berher herbarium.

Georges Rouy (Paris 1851–Asnières 1924) was born into a wealthy family, and he became a business administrator, journalist, secretary of a press union and a botanist. He collected plants in France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Scandinavia, and Algeria, but he also enriched his herbarium thanks to the plant exchanges with many botanists and by purchase. His herbarium contains more than 500,000 samples; the vascular cryptogams are preserved in the National Museum of Natural History of Paris, and the rest in the University of Lyon. He was director of the Académie Internationale de Géographie Botanique and vice-president of the Société Botanique de France.

In the Trèmols herbarium there are five specimens collected by Rouy and 33 of an exsiccata linked to Rouy (the transcription of the label’s heading of the exsiccate is: Herbier G. ROUY à PARIS 22 PASSAGE SAULNIER). These specimens were collected by ten different botanists like Julien Foucaud (1847–1904), Eugénio Schmitz (collector years 1868–1882), Eugène Jordan de Puyfol (1819–1891), Agostino Todaro (1818–1892), and Édouard Timbal-Lagrave (1819–1888).

There is evidence that the two botanists exchanged letters and plants, thanks to the existence of a letter from Trèmols to Rouy in 1895 in which he announced that he and Levéillé had been accepted as correspondent members of the Reial Academia de Ciències i Arts de Barcelona (manuscripts Ms 2617 / 593 preserved in the Correspondance scientifique de Georges Rouy collection of the library of the National Museum of Natural History of Paris).

Xavier Vendrely (Champagney 1837–1908) was pharmacist and a botanist specialized in the flora of Franche-Comté. He created an important herbarium, with about 30,000 specimens from Western and Central Europe, the Balkans, America, Africa and even Australia and Nepal, now preserved in the National Museum of Natural History of Paris.

The Trèmols herbarium includes 24 specimens collected by Vendrely, mostly coming from the Société Helvétique of which both were members.

Ludovic Giraudias (Saintes 1848–Orléans 1922) was receveur de l’enregistrement [tax collector] in Asprières, composer and amateur botanist. He mainly collected in Aveyron and was the founder of the Association Pyrénéenne pour l’Échange des Plantes.

In the Trèmols herbarium there are 25 specimens sent by Giraudias. The two botanists most likely exchanged their specimens directly, although or exchange through societies (such as Société Helvétique and Académie Internationale de Géographie Botanique) cannot be ruled out.

All this material gives us a clear idea of the amount of exchanges that existed at that time directly between botanists or through botanic societies or academies. All the authors mentioned above were members of these societies, which allowed them to be in relation with other botanists. All these facts explain quite well the presence in the P herbarium of a certain number of samples of a Catalan botanist who probably never went to Paris but was very active in the exchange of plants.

All images of specimens have been taken down from the National Museum of Natural History of Paris and those of the letters have been taken from Central Library of the National Museum of Natural History of Paris. Copyright: © MUSÉUM NATIONAL D’HISTOIRE NATURELLE

Seminario: “Colecciones científicas en movimiento”

El lunes 12 de diciembre de 9 a 14 horas se brindará el Seminario del proyecto RISE SciCoMove “Colecciones científicas en movimiento. Museos provinciales, archivos y practicas coleccionistas (1800–1950)” en el Auditorio Planta Baja de la Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Museo.

El proyecto SciCoMove se centra en el estudio de los intercambios científicos transatlánticos con el objetivo de compartir ideas acerca de cómo se construye el conocimiento sobre las colecciones de los museos. Este proyecto ofrece una visión más compleja de la historia de las colecciones paleontológicas, antropológicas, entomológicas y botánicas de los museos de Europa y América Latina. Está dirigido por las Dras. Nathalie Richard, Universidad Le Mans, e Irina Podgorny, CONICET – Museo de La Plata.

En este seminario los investigadores extranjeros invitados serán: Cristiana Oghina-Pavie, (Universidad de Angers, Grupo TEMOS-FRE CNRS, Francia), Franck Laurent (Universidad de Le Mans, Francia), Alma Hanning (Universidad de Bonn, Alemania) y Amandine Pequignot (Museo Nacional de Historia Natural de Paris, Francia).

El seminario es gratuito, sin inscripción y será en español e inglés. Está organizado por el Archivo Histórico del Museo de La Plata y el Proyecto Rise SciCoMove, financiado por la Unión Europea a través de su programa Horizonte 2020 para la investigación e innovación científica y el subsidio Marie Sklodowska-Curie.

Sobre la extranjería del cactus

By Irina Podgorny, CONICET/Archivo Histórico del Museo de La Plata

“Con la excepción de dos especies halladas en el este de Asia, la familia de las cactáceas pertenece con exclusividad al Nuevo Mundo donde se extiende desde los 40° de latitud norte hasta los 40° de latitud sur y desde el nivel del mar hasta el límite de las nieves eternas. La mayoría crece en la zona tórrida pero algunas formas prevalecen en las zonas templadas. En las regiones tropicales crecen a mayor altura, allí encuentran un clima más fresco”. Con ese pasaje de su Introducción a la Geografía de las Plantas, publicada en 1836, el botánico alemán Franz Ferdinand Meyen presentaba los cactus a los jardineros del Este y Norte de Europa.

Meyen, un seguidor de las ideas de Alexander von Humboldt sobre la distribución de los vegetales según la latitud y altitud, señalaba la riqueza de esta familia de la cual, hasta entonces, se conocían unas 200 especies. Confiaba en que el número se duplicaría a la brevedad, con la exploración minuciosa de las montañas americanas.

Pero, se equivocaba: hoy las especies de cactus se cuentan por miles, un inventario cuya historia está llena de complicaciones y de idas y vueltas, empezando por sus nombres, una mezcla de tradiciones botánicas y transferencias de todo tipo. “Tuna” y “nopal”, por ejemplo, son vocablos derivados de palabras taínas y nahuas mientras cactus y opuntia son términos latinos tomados de la historia natural de Plinio, donde se habla de unas plantas espinosas del Viejo Mundo y que, desconociéndose a qué se refería, fueron elegidas para designar a las pinchudas llegadas del otro lado del océano.

Las dificultades continúan con sus tallos suculentos que no se transportan ni se conservan en los herbarios. O mejor dicho y a diferencia de otras plantas, son difíciles de comprimir: todo intento de disecarlos entre dos hojas de papel, los deforma y los vuelve irreconocibles a los efectos de la comparación.

Y sus flores, una de las claves de la clasificación botánica, son efímeras, o se abren solo por la noche. Tan pasajeras como los viajeros de paso pesado; la observación, por ello, se hizo esperar a que florecieran bajo un techo de cristal. Llamativas y hermosas, las flores de los cactus –algunas similares a las orquídeas– se convirtieron en una de las estrellas de las regiones equinocciales que, en sucesivas modas, conquistaron el mercado europeo.

Meyen escribió esas líneas cuando el norte de Europa empezaba a recibirlas gracias a la recreación de las condiciones climáticas y del suelo americano en el frío de París, Berlín y Londres. Esta era, al menos, la pretensión de la nueva industria de los invernaderos y conservatorios destinada al jardinero moderno que, desde principios del siglo XIX, promovió entre las clases medias y urbanas, el cultivo doméstico de la naturaleza artificial.

Una belleza creada gracias a la química de los fertilizantes y la quema de carbón para producir energía, calefaccionar los cuartos y transportar con velocidad toda clase de producto perecedero. En ese contexto, los cactus cruzaron el paralelo 40 y se instalaron en la estética hortícola del norte de Europa porque, en el sur, ya estaban y desde hacía varios siglos.

De todas las familias de plantas americanas, los cactus fueron los más difundidos en el Viejo Mundo, en parte porque la reserva de agua de sus tallos les permitía resistir el cruce del Atlántico y también porque Lisboa, Valencia, Roma, están en los bordes del paralelo 40. El Mediterráneo, hoy sabemos, comparte muchos rasgos de la temperatura y del régimen de lluvias del clima de California, uno de los paraísos terrestres para los cactus y las plantas suculentas. A decir verdad, apenas notaron la mudanza y hoy, los turistas, tampoco se enteran del carácter humano, de estas plantas que adornan los acantilados y las postales de Portofino o el Algarve.

Las tunas (Cactus ficus-indica y Opuntia) pisaron la península ibérica unas décadas después de los viajes Colón. Desde allí, se expandieron por los bordes del Mediterráneo, donde se naturalizaron o se utilizaron para construir cercos y defensas militares. No era para menos: la experiencia de cualquier jardinero de balcón alcanza para comprobar que las tunas se reproducen como yuyo.

Basta con que el gato las quiebre para que, sin hacer nada y de cualquier parte, broten nuevas raíces. Basta y sobra: al año siguiente, ese hijo, dará flores rojas o amarillas y, con mucho sol, hasta frutos, esos que en Europa se conocieron como higo de las Indias y, en francés, figuier de Barbarie, es decir higos del Magreb donde también se multiplicaron como los panes y las mieses.

En esas zonas, hasta mediados del siglo XVIII, se intentó cultivarlos para producir, como en Nueva España, la grana cochinilla, el insecto americano del que se extrae el preciado carmín. Nunca se pudo alcanzar los niveles de rinde de los mexicanos ni la tecnología allí desarrollada aún antes de la conquista, donde el nopal cultivado y silvestre estaba muy extendido.

Pero los cactus no se trasladaron solos. En los mismos barcos, alguien tuvo la ocurrencia de traerse algunos agaves. O pitas como se los llama en el Río de la Plata, el maguey del Caribe, la fuente del hilo sisal, del papel, del pulque y de otros aguardientes, otro género carnoso y con espinas pero, en este caso, de la familia de las asparagáceas, grupo que engloba a los espárragos comestibles.

La capacidad reproductiva de los agaves, originarios de la región árida del norte de México, el sur de los Estados Unidos y Colombia, los llevó por los mismos caminos y, según los registros históricos de la región francesa de la Provenza y la Costa Azul, los agaves ya se habrían avistado en Toulon hacia fines del siglo XVI. Según ese censo, el número y la zona de crecimiento de los agaves se mantuvieron estables hasta que explotaron en el siglo XIX.

Hoy es raro voltear la cabeza sin toparse con una de estas plantas que, en el verano de 2021, florecieron con furor y, a esta altura, deben haber muerto. Como en el siglo pasado me explicó mi madre con rigor de abogada: la flor, de dimensiones gigantescas, requiere tanto esfuerzo en su gestación que, al producirla, la planta se consume y fallece no sin antes producir cientos de semillas. Dura lex, sed lex.

El sacrificio de los agaves por el bien de la posteridad no pasó desapercibido para los administradores del paisaje mediterráneo, una región caracterizada por las sequías prolongadas y susceptible de ser devorada por el fuego.

Ya en 1927, L’Intransigeant de París, el vespertino de derecha más grande de la década de 1920, con una tirada de alrededor de 400.000 ejemplares, se hacía eco de una campaña de un ingeniero italiano que proponía sembrar agaves en la Costa Azul, las Bocas del Ródano y la Provenza para proteger el bosque nativo de los peligros incendiarios.

Una medida que no se terminó de adoptar pero que se reflotó varias veces y hoy se sigue discutiendo en California, donde en 2005, el Departamento Forestal adoptó el agave azul como cortina cortafuego.

El agave, en efecto, es un género vegetal que se quema con una intensidad más baja que las otras. En Francia, la discusión no se acaba: entre los que quieren extirparlos por su carácter invasivo y foráneo y quienes recuerdan sus bondades, está toda esa gente que ni los ve, que les saca fotos y regresa a casa con la vaga sensación de haberse pinchado con algo. Un cactus, un agave, qué más da. Alguna espina de esas plantas que crecen naturalmente en cualquier lado.

They talk about us: “Un proyecto internacional liderado por una científica del CONICET estudia las colecciones de museos provinciales”

¿Cómo llegan los objetos a los museos? ¿Qué viajes hicieron antes de ocupar un lugar en una vitrina o en un depósito? ¿En qué contexto fueron colectados? ¿Quién los adquiere, quién los cede, quién define cómo reunirlos, por qué se descartan? Algunas de esas preguntas llevaron a las historiadoras de la ciencia y de los museos Irina Podgorny y Nathalie Richard, investigadora del CONICET y de la Universidad de Le Mans respectivamente, a proponer un proyecto SciCoMove a la Unión Europea para estudiar estas cuestiones inherentes a la constitución de las colecciones de los museos de arqueología y de historia natural.

Foto: Adriana Miranda/ gentileza investigadora

A poco más de un año de su puesta en marcha en mayo de 2021, Podgorny señala: “A veces se piensa que un museo de provincia es algo local, de alcance limitado, nosotras destacamos que los museos, no importa dónde estén, funcionan en red con otros y con personas e instituciones que, a veces, trascienden las fronteras del país donde se encuentran. Los primeros resultados del proyecto lo confirman”.

Tal como indica la investigadora, el proyecto, a través del quehacer histórico, apunta a “dar vida a colecciones que quedaron olvidadas o que se descartaron porque perdieron la información asociada a ellos. Es decir, apuntamos a conectar las colecciones con los archivos y las bibliotecas ya que los objetos no hablan solos sino a través de la investigación. Nos interesa mostrar la relevancia de la historia para los profesionales que hoy hacen ciencia con las colecciones. Sobre todo a través de la documentación que rastrea su origen y muestra cómo llegaron, por qué se traspapelaron, quién los coleccionó, quién las hizo, cuándo y cómo. Se trata de proveer información que conecte esos objetos mudos con textos, personajes, ideas. Hay colecciones guardadas sin ningún archivo emparentado, o que han perdido hasta sus etiquetas: los historiadores podemos colaborar a reconstruir sus itinerarios tanto dentro como fuera del museo. Hay objetos que responden a los intereses de la ciencia del pasado y hoy, desechados de su uso, se desconoce para qué servían o cómo, por qué llegaron hasta allí. ¿Qué podemos hacer? Darles vida a través de la investigación histórica”.

Un componente central del proyecto son las misiones en el extranjero. “Gracias a ellas, este grupo interdisciplinario, con base en distintos países y con conocimientos diferentes, intercambia información sobre las piezas para que los museos y los investigadores puedan hacer algo con ello”.

En el marco de esos viajes, Susana García, investigadora del CONICET en la Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Museo de la Universidad Nacional de La Plata, integrante de este y otros proyectos dirigidos por Podgorny, tuvo la oportunidad de trabajar en los museos de Barcelona y de Le Mans sobre las colecciones de mulitas y peludos y los canastos que, a inicios del siglo pasado, se hacían con la coraza y la cola de estos animales como souvenir para los turistas. “Gracias a este proyecto, constaté que los ejemplares usados en algunos canastos no pertenecían a la especie comercializada desde Texas sino a una de la región pampeana. Por lo visto, en nuestro país alguien se aprovechó de esta moda para fabricar y comercializar el mismo objeto que se manufacturaba en la frontera mexicana”, señala García.

Hacia 2024, cuando el proyecto finalice, se realizará una exhibición digital de algunos objetos que incluyen piezas prehistóricas francesas y colecciones de insectos sudamericanos. Por otro lado, en 2022 se realizaron varios talleres y cursos sobre la historia de las colecciones de cráneos, las falsificaciones y las réplicas. Estos favorecen el intercambio entre los profesionales pero también apuntan a la formación de los doctorandos que forman parte de los equipos de trabajo.

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SciCoMove Training Session:  a participant’s experience

By Emilia Mac Donagh, UNLP

From the 4 to the 8 of July, the postgraduate course “HISTORIA NATURAL, COLECCIONES, ARCHIVOS Y MUSEOS. SIGLOS XIX Y XX” took place in the Museum of La Plata. As a PhD fellow at the Faculty of Natural Sciences, I enrolled. But honestly in the beginning I was only moved by how catchy I found the name and it´s affinity to my thesis topic. At that moment I wasn’t aware of the fact that the academic proposal had its origin in a SciCoMove workshop/training session. But the surprise could not have been more gratifying. The fusion of both opened the gates of the SciCoMove Project and allowed people with different backgrounds and from different points of Argentina to take a look at the work that’s currently being done within this project.

It was an intense week of hard work and exchanges. The course offered expositions and testimonies by professionals from different places like Switzerland, France, and Argentina. But, moreover, it was marked by the constant promotion of dialogue and exchange among everyone who was involved. And that included those of us who were taking it as a postgraduate course, the teachers, and the PhD student members of the SciCoMove Project.  Being able to debate, share ideas, and co-create with people from different places and academic backgrounds, and who participate in projects like SciCoMove, represents a great opportunity of academic and professional growth.

Throughout the week, Irina, Susana and Natalie invited us to review the history of all museums as institutions, focusing in the particular case of the La Plata Museum, where we actually were. Being inside the museum was not a minor detail when breaking down it’s emergence story, and understanding that it is not as lineal and fluid as it is usually portrayed.

We wandered around the museum, and visited the exhibitions, the deposits, and the archive. For some this implied their first time in the museum and its guts. And for others like me, this meant a known place unveiling new connotations and possibilities. The study and analysis of collections, archives and objects that are or have been a part of the museums allows to revisit and rethink how the boundaries of the scientific field are and have been historically built. From that perspective the course proposed a guide to consider what (and who) are conceived inside those borders as well as how this is constantly being reshaped.

One of the things that blew my mind during the course was the idea of objects in museums and collections as artifacts. This is one of the pillars in which the SciCoMove project strands in order to tell how these objects have been moved around different places.  I was familiar with the concept of artifact and its traditional application in archaeology. Artifact, as a concept is traditionally used in opposition of what is pristine and untouched. So, anything that has signs of being exposed to some kind of human work, becomes an artifact. Of course, all tools found in an archaeological context easily fit this classification. Now the interesting part comes when we define what is this “human work”, and how it impacts the objects.

Sometime ago a friend archaeologist had revealed to me that this concept had many more possibilities, as he implied in his work that the soils and strata where the archaeological objects were found could be seen as an artifact too. And I found this somehow related. Just as the soils, the “natural” objects often found in the museums are normally conceived just as a part of nature, portraited in the exhibitions, or safeguarded in the collections. Then, for example, we could think about a piece of dinosaur bone. It probably has been dug out, reconditioned after, placed in a particular place according to one particular bone structure, and displayed in a room charged with conjectures about it. All those procedures involve changes in the objects, even if they are meant for preservation. When thinking about it, to classify, arrange chronologically, restore, build up, and all other actions that take place when working within museums and collections are human work. The same goes to any type of object, no matter how “natural” or “cultural” we might think it is, from the point when an object becomes something collected, categorised, saved, etc. it begins to be conceptualised. And that is the key to start talking about artifacts, because to give meaning is one of the firsts and most basic human works.

From a historical perspective, with case-study examples and in line with the goal of the SciCoMove Project, the course aimed to make evident that when constructing scientific knowledge, no man nor woman of science acts alone. Neither in the past or present.

At the beginning of the week, Irina Podgorny insisted that we let aside the idiomatic barriers and size the situation to meet other people and even make friends. Following her advice, along the week we saw how the theoretical and conceptual talks slipped out of the classes and continued unto the bars. There´s no better empiric proof than that of what role company, assembly, and the collective play for the generation of knowledge.

Thereby, my bond with museums has a long history. Since I started studding anthropology in the Collage of Natural Sciences, which is associated with the Museum of La Plata. And now I am carrying out my PhD studies considering museums as spaces of science communication and heritage safeguard, and on how to problematize that, within the construction of scientific knowledge. With that in mind, participating of the course has been a very valuable and rewarding experience, especially considering the opportunity to get in touch with the SciCoMove Project.

I have a Bachelor´s Degree in Anthropology by the Facultad de Ciencias Naturales, Universidad Nacional de La Plata (UNLP), where I now also taught. In 2021 I got a University Diploma in Public Science Communication, by the UNICEN. Currently I am carrying out my PhD, working in the Laboratory of Applied Ethnography Investigations, and with a scholarship from the UNLP, under the tutoring of Gabriela Morgante (LINEA UNLP-CIC) and Mariano Bonomo (Dept. Arqueología, Museo de La Plata). My thesis centers  on museums as places for the collective construction of knowledge and the heritage safeguard, and takes place in Molinos (Calchaquí Valleys, Salta)

SciCoMove Training Session:  La experiencia de participar

By Emilia Mac Donagh, UNLP

Del 4 al 8 de Julio en el Museo de La Plata, se desarrolló el curso de posgrado “HISTORIA NATURAL, COLECCIONES, ARCHIVOS Y MUSEOS. SIGLOS XIX Y XX”. Como estudiante del doctorado en Ciencias Naturales de la Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Museo, me inscribí al curso, honestamente impulsada sólo por lo llamativo del título y la afinidad con mi tema de estudio. Ignoraba, al momento, que partía de la propuesta de un taller y un curso de formación de SciCoMove con título homónimo. Pero la sorpresa no pudo haber sido más grata.  La fusión de ambas instancias permitió a abrir las puertas de SciCoMove, y que personas con diferentes formaciones y de diferentes puntos de la Argentina pudiéramos dar un vistazo al trabajo que están realizando actualmente desde el proyecto.

Fue una ardua semana de trabajo e intercambios. El curso brindó exposiciones y testimonios de profesionales de diferentes lugares, como Suiza, Francia y Argentina.  Pero, sobre todo, estuvo marcado el fomento del diálogo y el intercambio, entre todas las personas que participan. Y esto incluye a las personas que lo estábamos tomando como curso de posgrado, a las docentes a cargo y a los doctorandos de SciCoMove. Debatir, compartir ideas y construir con personas de otras formaciones, de otros lugares representa una gran oportunidad para el crecimiento personal y profesional.

A lo largo de los encuentros las docentes del curso nos invitaron a revisar la historia de los museos, en general, y tomando como caso particular el Museo de La Plata, donde además nos encontrábamos físicamente. Estar allí no resultó menor a la hora de desglosar el relato del surgimiento de este espacio, y comprender que no es tan lineal y fluido como a veces se lo presenta.

Pudimos recorrer el museo, las muestras, los depósitos y el archivo. Para algunos implicaba conocer por primera vez el Museo y sus entrañas, aunque para otros representaba un espacio ya conocido, cotidiano, o hasta nuestro espacio de trabajo, develando nuevas connotaciones y posibilidades. El estudio y análisis de colecciones, los archivos y los objetos que forman o han formado pate de museos permite rever y repensar cómo se construyen hoy en día, y cómo se han construido históricamente las fronteras del campo científico. Desde allí el curso nos proponía una guía para ver qué (y quiénes) se conciben dentro de estos límites, pero también cómo estos últimos se reformulan constantemente.

Uno de los aspectos que más me fascinó del curso fue la propuesta de concebir a los objetos, que se hallan en los museos, como artefactos. Este es uno de los pilares del Proyecto SciCoMove para el estudio del movimiento de estos objetos. Por mi formación de gado, estaba familiarizada con la aplicación más tradicional que el concepto artefacto posee para la arqueología. “Artefacto” suele usarse en oposición a lo que se piensa prístino e intacto. Así, cualquier cosa que presente signos de haber estado expuesto a algún tipo de trabajo -acción- humano, se convierte en artefacto. Las herramientas halladas en un contexto arqueológico, por supuesto que encajan fácilmente en esta clasificación. Ahora, la parte más interesante llega cuando intentamos definir qué es “acción humana”, y cómo impacta en los objetos.

Algún tiempo atrás, un amigo arqueólogo me había revelado que este concepto posee muchas más posibilidades, el mismo insinuaba en un trabajo que los suelos y los estratos donde se hallan los restos arqueológicos pueden ser vistos como artefactos también. Encuentro esto de alguna forma relacionado con lo que se planteaba en el curso. Como los suelos, los “objetos naturales” que comúnmente encontramos en los museos, suelen concebirse como una parte de la naturaleza expuestas en las muestras, o salvaguardadas en las colecciones. Podríamos, por ejemplo, pesar en un fragmento de hueso de dinosaurio entonces. Probablemente fue excavado, extraído, reacondicionado, colocado en una posición particular de a cuerdo a una estructura ósea particular, y presentado en una habitación, cargada con conjeturas sobre el mismo. Todos esos procedimientos involucran cambios en los objetos, incluso si persiguen fines de preservación. Al pensarlo, clasificar, ordenar cronológicamente, restaurar, reconstruir, y todo el resto de las acciones que se llevan a cabo con el trabajo en museos y con colecciones, son acciones puramente humanas. Y lo mismo aplica apara cualquier tipo de objeto, sin importar que tan “natural” o “cultural” creamos que sea, desde el momento en el que un objeto pasa a ser algo recolectado, categorizado, guardado, etc. pasa a estar conceptualizado. Y esa es la clave para empezar a hablar de artefactos, porque dar significado es una de las acciones humanas más básicas.

Desde una perspectiva histórica, con ejemplos de estudios de caso, y en línea con los objetivos del proyecto SciCoMove, el curso pretendía dejar, en evidencia que a la hora de construir conocimiento científico ningún hombre o mujer de ciencia actúa sólo. Ni en el pasado, ni hoy en día.

Al empezar la semana, Irina Podgorny (una de las docentes a cargo del curso) nos insistió en que dejáramos de lado las barreras idiomáticas y aprovecháramos la ocasión para conocer a otras personas y hasta incluso “hacernos amigos”. Siguiendo su consejo, vimos como lo largo de la semana, las charlas conceptuales y teóricas terminaban filtrándose fuera del aula y seguían en los bares. No hay mejor comprobante empírico que este del rol que juega lo colectivo, la compañía y el encuentro para la generación de conocimiento.

Mi relación con los museos se remonta ya a un tiempo atrás. Estudie la licenciatura en antropología en la Facultad de Ciencias Naturales de la UNLP, que está asociada al Museo de La Plata. Mi especialización en comunicación pública de la ciencia, influyó en que actualmente para mi doctorado me centre en y considere a los museos como espacios de comunicación de ciencia, además de salvaguarda del patrimonio, y sobre como problematizar esto en el marco de la construcción de conocimiento científico. Entendiendo esto, fue una experiencia muy valiosa y gratificante haber participado del curso, con la oportunidad de entrar en contacto del proyecto SciCoMove.

Estudié Antropología en la Facultad de Ciencias Naturales de la Universidad Nacional de La Plata, donde actualmente soy docente. En 2022 terminé una Diplomatura universitaria en Comunicación Pública de la Ciencia, en la UniCen. Actualmente cuento con una beca doctoral de la UNLP, con lugar de trabajo en el Laboratorio de Investigaciones Etnográficas Aplicadas, bajo la dirección de Gabriela Morgante (LINEA UNLP-CIC) y la co-dirección de Mariano Bonomo (Diisión Arqueología, Museo de La Plata). Mi tesis se centra en los museos como espacios para comunicación y construcción colectiva de conocimiento, así como para la puesta en valor del patrimonio, en la localidad de Molinos (Valles Calchaquíes, Salta).