Natural Science Department records

The Natural Sciences Department of the Brooklyn Museum was active from 1897 through roughly 1935 when collections were deaccessioned. However, the Brooklyn Institute (what would become the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences and parent to the Brooklyn Museum), collected and lectured on natural history specimens and topics from the 1850s until the Brooklyn Museum was opened in 1897.

Several natural science societies, such as the New York Entomological Society and The Brooklyn Microscopical Society, joined the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences between 1888 and 1890 as “Departments” of Entomology, Microscopy, etc. The Departments held monthly meetings, lectures, and actively collected specimens. The taxonomy of animals, chemistry, and physics were dominant areas of interest for researchers and science committees in the metropolitan area. Alongside William H. Goodyear, the first curator for the Department of Fine Arts, Jacob K. Doll was designated as the first curator for the Department of Entomology in 1898. From the late 19th century to approximately 1913, the Brooklyn Institute transformed its small displays of natural science material, such as specimens of botany, geology, and mineralogy, to the collection of thousands of zoological and geological specimens, including taxidermy and models of diverse habitats for study and public view. Departments of BIAS (Mineralogy, Zoology, Entomology, etc.) combined to create the Natural Sciences Department of the Brooklyn Museum with Alfred Mayer being the second curator. Within the department there were divisions for Entomology, Birds, and Mammals. The department had a dual focus of exhibiting collections and maintaining research collections for scholars. Curators of the Natural Science Department regularly went on expeditions across the country to acquire new species of animals and plant life that had not yet been displayed in the Museum. The Natural Science department occupied the West Wing of the second, third, and fourth floor galleries throughout the 1920s and was divided into three sections: the vertebrate, invertebrate, and botanical halls. Each hall was managed by curators for each subdivision (e.g.,Ornithology, Zoology, and Entomology). Jacob Doll, Charles Schaeffer, and George K. Cherrie were among several curators that supervised the administrative duties of each Natural Science collection in the Museum and regularly communicated with the curator-in-chief and director of BIAS. The rapid development of the Natural Sciences Department coincided with the emergence of ethnological study at the Museum in the early 20th century. Beginning in 1897, cultural objects belonging to indigenous communities from the Americas were sought as ethnological material and acquired as part of the Natural Sciences collection, overseen by curator Alfred G. Mayer, prior to creation of a separate Ethnology Department that was established in 1903 and led by Stewart Culin. By 1913, efforts to preserve and maintain the large amount of specimens that were accessioned by the Natural Science department had started to decline. William Henry Fox, appointed Curator-in-Chief and Director of the Museum the same year, devoted more financial and curatorial upkeep to the fine arts collections, directing attention away from the overflow of specimens in Natural Science. Once other museums started to gain interest in occupying space within BIAS and the fine arts became more popular, the Natural Sciences Department and its exhibition activities were gradually eliminated. Between 1929 and 1942 museums such as the the National Museum in Washington, D.C. (now known as the Smithsonian), the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and the Brooklyn Children's Museum received portions of BIAS’s Natural Science collections. The department remained nominally as an educational club until 1964.

1899-1900

C.T. Goodwin

1900-1906

Alfred G. Mayer

1907-1913

Edward L. Morris

1914-1919

Robert Cushman Murphy

1920-1930

George P. Engelhardt