The Paleontology Gallery at the Museum of Natural History, Paris. |
Paula Young Lee
The Logic of the Bones
6pm, Wednesday, March 9, 2000
Lecture
Graham Foundation, 4 West Burton Place, Chicago
Founded in 1793, the Museum of Natural History in Paris was the first public museum of its kind in the world. The extensive complex featured several freestanding galleries, an amphitheater, laboratories, botanical gardens, amenagerie, and housing for the Museum’s professors. Many of these structures were built in the first half of the nineteenth century, under the direction of one of the Museum’s resident architects. In successive order, they were: Jacques Molinos, Charles Rohault deFleury, and Jules Andre. At this site, an intricate relationship developed between architectural spaces and scientific practices that affected the conceptual foundations of both fields.
Paula Young Lee is Assistant Professor of Humanities at the University of South Florida, Tampa. Previously, she taught at the Harrington Institute of Interior Design in Chicago and at DePaul University. Dr. Lee received her Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Chicago in 1999.
Her research focuses on nineteenth-century architecture, chiefly France. Her work has been published in journals such as Art Bulletin, Assemblage, and the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. Her dissertation, "The Logic of the Bones: Architecture and the Anatomical Sciences at the Museum d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris, 1789–1889," was supported in part by grants from the Graham Foundation, the Chicago Group on Modern France, and the University of Chicago. Ms. Lee was a recipient of the Graham Foundation’s Carter Manny Award in 1997.