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Bickmore, Albert S. (Albert Smith), 1839-1914

 Person

Dates

  • Existence: 1839 March 1 - 1914 August 12

Biography

Abstract:

Albert S. Bickmore was an American museum curator and superintendent. Bickmore was the principal founder of the American Museum of Natural History.

Albert S. Bickmore was a museum curator and superintendent. Bickmore was the principal founder of the American Museum of Natural History and the organizer and first curator of the Department of Public Education; he was also curator of archaeology and curator of ethnology. After receiving his B.A. and M.A. from Dartmouth, and working at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology, Bickmore traveled for three years between 1864 and 1867, through Indonesia, East Asia, Siberia and Europe, collecting specimens and studying ethnology, visiting the Ainu, Gilyaks and other peoples. On his return to the U.S., Bickmore worked with a group of prominent New Yorkers, including Morris K. Jesup, to draw up a petition and plan for an American natural history museum. When the AMNH opened in 1871, Bickmore was appointed superintendent. He developed a series of Lectures to teachers (1888-1903), illustrated with lantern slides, covering all the scientific disciplines in which the museum was involved, which could be presented to school groups or used by teachers in their classrooms. In 1884, he resigned his post of superintendent in order to act as curator of the Dept. of Public Instruction (later named the Dept. of Public Education), established in 1886. Bickmore continued to expand the educational work of the museum, offering lectures to the public and, in collaboration with Columbia University, developing courses in forestry, astronomy, mineralogy and chemistry. He retired in January 1905 to become curator emeritus.

Topics

Found in 2 Collections and/or Records:

Frederick Ward Putnam Agassiz Museum photograph

 Collection
Identifier: PPC .P88
Scope and Contents

Original photograph of the old Agassiz Museum building and a "letter-press description" of the Museum from 1907, with an accompanying letter signed by F.W. Putnam to Albert Bickmore dated Feb. 17, 1910 regarding the old Agassiz Museum building, from the Peabody Museum of Harvard University.

Dates: 1910

Nuttall Ornithological Club photographs of ornithologists and other scientists

 Collection
Identifier: PPC .N87
Scope and Contents

Portraits of scientits that were used in the following publications: Origins and Development of North American Avian Biogeography, p. 392; Contributions to the History of North American Ornithology, pp.387-428.

Dates: 1995?

Filtered By

  • Subject: Photographic Print Collection X