Detail map of Washington, District of Columbia, United States,Plauen, Dresden, Sachsen, Germany

A: Washington, District of Columbia, United States, B: Plauen, Dresden, Sachsen, Germany

A. B. Meyer's Pioneering Study of U.S. Museums and Research Libraries

1905

In 1905 German anthropologist, ornithologist, and entomologist, and Director of the Royal Zoological, Anthropological and Ethnographical Museum in Dresden, Adolf Bernard Meyer, published "Studies of the Museums and Kindred Institutions of New York City, Albany, Buffalo, and Chicago, with Notes on Some European Institutions".This appeared in the Report of the United States National Museum [Smithsonian Institution] for 1903, pp. 311-608, with forty plates. It was a translation revised by the author of studies he first published in German in 1900-02, and 1902-03.

Meyer's work was a pioneering illustrated study of the main museums of science and art in the United States and Europe as well as a survey of major research libraries in both America and Europe.  It includes striking images of building exteriors and interiors either no longer in existence or which have been extensively modified, and it also contains images of state of the art museum displays from the time.

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