When did the Redpath Museum first open? This museum was built in 1881 and opened the following year. The occasion for opening it was the gala meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Some beautiful pictures of the gallery upstairs appeared in a British newspaper at the time and people were dressed up in Victorian fineries.
Was the museum always part of McGill? Yes. The Redpath Museum was built for Dawson. There is a story that says that he was offered a position at Princeton University and he was thinking about it. And the supporters of McGill thought this would be a terrible thing and Peter Redpath--who had already given lots of money to McGill--decided that he would build for Dawson the one thing that Dawson wanted most: a state-of-the-art research facility. And this is it; this is what he wanted.
Do many universities have museums on campus? There are a lot of universities that do. But, there is an enormous amount of variation in the size of museums and how they are run. It is common for many departments to have museums, such as the biology department. Here on campus, there is the Rutherford museum in Physics and the Oscar library in Medicine. A number of universities have museums that are run as separate entities. They may have links to other departments.
The Redpath museum is the only university museum that is run as its own department almost at the same level as the other departments in the faculty of science. Faculties are appointed here and we teach courses on our own.
What kind of courses are offered here? We run courses that are related to the mission of the museum and the expertise of the professors here, namely courses in biological diversity and evolution. For most of the museum's history, there were only a few faculty members, which is not enough to run a full program. Before the mid-sixties, the museum was closely associated with Geology or Earth & Planetary Sciences. And then there was a shift to paleonthology and now we are closely associated with Biology. Lately, we started a number of courses on our own. For example, there is a course on science and museums, one on African natural history and Linda Cooper runs a number of courses on science writing (REDM 399, REDM 410, REDM 610 and REDM 710 ) which are applied across departments.
Let's say somebody comes to you with a fossil, what would you do with it? We get people coming all the time with fossils, bones or rocks wondering what it is. And we take a look at it and figure out what it is and let them know if it is something very interesting or not. Occasionally we get very interesting things that come in and we see if there is scientific or monetary value associated to it. But people often bring in deer jaw bones and cow foot bones.
Have you ever had something brought in that was so interesting that you added to the collection? Yes. We got some very interesting artifacts. It's amazing what people have in their homes that they gather up and there are a number of people who have really rare things.
What is the oldest specimen you have in terms of date? We have fossils and rocks specimen from the pre-Cambrian that go way back 700 million years ago, which were the first traces of living things on the planet. And we have hard rocks and minerals that go back to the time when they were formed.
What is your favorite specimen? They are all my favorites! But I do like the ancient coins. We have a lot of them from the Greek and Roman times. I always think they are fascinating because they are common currency that people had in their pockets to buy things. They are worn and show signs of being used. And interestingly, they show what was important to them at the time. In early Greek coins they had symbols of the city on them; the Athenian coins would have an owl and Athena on it. But as the Roman times came, it all became more political. Rulers started putting their own profiles on coins to prove they were in charge. We have coins of Alexander with his profile on it. You can clearly see in the profile that he is wearing a lion head skin, so he is equating himself with Hercules.
What is the percentage of McGill students vs. general population who come to visit the museum? We do get a large number of students: about 8,000 student visits per year. And we get altogether well over 50,000 visits per year. And that's been a very big increase in visitations that we get: It ramped up from the nineties.
But we try to maintain a balance: since we're not solely a public exhibition, we also have to do our academic work! But overall, it's great to have the public's support, we need them
