Boros István (szerk.): A Magyar Természettudományi Múzeum évkönyve 6. (Budapest 1955)

Boros, I.: The paleontological exhibition of the Hungarian National Museum - Museum of Natural History

which, as I will later discuss it, will help, I believe, to bridge over difficulties of this kind of other museums in similar predicaments. Concerning display space, our position was more favourable ; we placed our material in 2 halls, of more than 350 m

2 display surface with large skylights. A display area surely not large enough for a Natinonal Museum, — yet not exactly small either. This circumstance had in itself delimited the amount of display material to be shown, compelling us involuntarily to endeavour the exhibiting of the essentials only : to abolish overcrowding on the one hand, and to try and augment perspectivic effects on the other. It almost forced us to adhere to the fundamentally important principle in the building of modern exhibitions : the visitor should not feel itself to have entered overflowing storerooms, but into the airy halls of science facilitating the comprehensive view of the exhibition, and to have a corresponding mood at his very entry. As our aim, mentioned above, had been to show the evolution of Life by the use of copious and attractive material marshalled and arranged, as far as possible, not so much by indirectly logical as by actually objective proofs : to serve the information of all and sundry, learned and unschooled ; — we had decided on, and blueprinted in advance, the several principles of points of view on which the display was to be effected. a) One of our chief ideas had been to illustrate life in ancient times, — departing from the formerly followed usage of the displaying of the material shown in separate cases isolated in space, — by making conspicuous not only the différences between its several phases and the stages of evolution, but also by their succession and organic interdependence. b) As a result of this endeavour, we looked, for the further illustration of the concept of everything is in interdependence with everything eise«, for further solutions also in regard of causing to proceed the animal and plant forms as not isolated from each other. If but only a partial explanation of their phyleiic evolution had been aimed at, we have to simultaneously dispaly their environment and its changes too. This is the cause why we illustrate the history of the Earth parallel to the evolution of Life,, and also why we expose the fact, by the presentation of geological processes, that (primarily) the materials and also the surface of the Earth are in constant transformation by the effects of natural forces. The simultaneous and synchronous presentation of both will lead the visitor (whose attention is, of course, called on these facts by properly explaining texts too) to the discovery that the alternations of the external conditions of life are strictly followed by corresponding changes in the organic beings ; the transformation of the former will involve the modification of the latter. And we have employed this method not only generally but, as far as it had been possible, in details, and consistently, too. By this we gave the most characteristical feature to that didactical frame in which we mounted the whole exhibition ; — as also its instructivity which, according to an unanimous opinion, the fruitful contemplation of the theme demands. c) This latter requirement, the possibly most effective execution of illustration, had been the mainspring of our other target : an effort to employ the highest possible amount of reconstruction. Paintings, drawings, smaller and bigger models depict for, and represent to, the visitor the ancient landscapes and scenes, their plant and animal forms in the possibly truest presentation of what the latest researches regard as scientific reality. They will not satisfy curiosity alone but also show how far science penetrated into the secrets of the