A curatorial history of the Rutgers University Geology Museum

Founded in 1872, the Rutgers University Geology Museum is the oldest museum dedicated to geology in the United States. Over its history, the Museum’s displays have been created and transformed by its curators, each with their own visions and goals. This thesis assembles a curatorial history of the Museum in order to understand the processes leading to its current state, and assesses the Museum’s current condition through a close examination of its displays and mapping their curatorial modes to create a visual representation of their distribution within the Museum. Today, the accumulation of curatorial decisions over the Museum’s long history has resulted in an eclectic and polyvocal curatorial approach, producing a palimpsest of curatorial modes that is unique to the Museum, which defines its current character.