Sea Currents in Nineteenth-Century Art, Science and Culture: Commodifying the Ocean World

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How did scientists, artists, designers, manufacturers and amateur enthusiasts experience and value the sea and its products Taking a fresh approach to oceanic history, this book brings together material culture, oceanography, and environmental history to uncover marine object and display histories and the role they played in nineteenth-century culture. Scientific exploration, colonial expansion, industrialization, and the rise of middle-class tourism transformed the way the ocean was seen and experienced. Its mystery, made tangible through processing and representational technologies, captivated practitioners and audiences. Combining essays and case studies by scholars, curators, and scientists, this book investigates the collecting and display, illustration and ornamentation, and trade and consumption of marine flora and fauna, analysing their material, aesthetic and commercial dimensions. Traversing global art history, the history of science, empire studies, anthropology, ecocriticism and material culture, it surveys the currency of marine matter in the economies and ecologies of a modernizing ocean world. By highlighting the relevance and role the ocean world played in modern science and industry, art and culture, this book demonstrates the vital interconnectivity of art and science and the importance of ocean-oriented perspectives in the understanding of modern history.

Reviews

Sea Currents forwards an important intervention for historians to consider the oceans beyond their conventional treatment as surfaces or metaphors...In light of this lacuna in historiography, Sea Currents offers an elaborate collection of histories that recognizes both the material and metaphorical seas. * H-Sci-Med-Tech, H-Net Reviews *
Sea Currents expands our thinking about human interactions with the oceans, linking developments in museums, consumerism, exploration, and colonialism with artistic and scientific culture, in an engaging discussion of how the ocean world was commodified by and for diverse communities. * Peter H. Hoffenberg, Professor of History, University of Hawaii at Manoa; co-editor of Oceania and the Victorian Imagination (2013) *
The seas leavings whalebone, spermaceti, isinglass, mother-of-pearl, coral, seaweed fascinate and allure. Exploring how nineteenth-century oceanic commodities were desired, extracted, displayed, and sold around the world, this volume provides a fascinating portrait of the Victorian sea and its global meanings. * Steve Mentz, Professor of English, St. Johns University, USA; author of Ocean (2020) and A Cultural History of the Early Modern Sea (2021) *
Sea Currents moves beyond sublime seascapes and shipwrecks to uncover marine object and display histories and the myriad ways they infiltrated everyday life. From rich and strange to domesticated, here the sea not only exceeds the frame but blows it apart. * Pandora Syperek, co-editor, Curating the Sea, Journal of Curatorial Studies, 2020, and Oceans (Whitechapel: Documents of Contemporary Art, 2023) *

Author Bio

Kathleen Davidson is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Art History at the University of Sydney, Australia. Molly Duggins is a lecturer in the Department of Art History and Theory at the National Art School, Sydney, Australia.