East London Museum
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The East London Museum is a public collection on natural history and historical topics in the South African port city of East London (Southernwood district). It was founded in 1921 as a private museum company and developed into an important museum facility in southern Africa .
history
It was founded on July 19, 1921 as a private museum society by interested residents of the city. This group of people included Mayor J. Neale and his deputy James Bruce-Bays. George Rattray (1872–1941), who was a PhD botanist and was the principal of Selborne College in the city , was elected president of the society . The Society's early meetings took place in the members' homes. Its activities included the collection of donations and museum objects. The collections were housed in a room above the tea room of a supermarket on Oxford Street .
The institution received its status as a provincial museum on November 28, 1924. In the following year, the city council of East London transferred a plot of land in the Selborne district to the company for the purpose of building its own new building. In 1926 the growing collections moved to 9 Gladstone Street and in 1930 to 15 Gladstone Street .
The first new museum building was built in the neighborhood of the Technical College of East London (vocational and university preparatory school) in the Selborne district. There the museum opened its first publicly accessible collection on September 26, 1931 in the presence of a senior provincial official. Its management was transferred to Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer in December of the year it was founded, with the title of curator . She ran this institution, since 1945 under the name "Director", until 1973. In the period up to 1945 the collection grew considerably. As a result, the museum moved to a new building on Oxford Street in 1950 , where it reopened in November. The administrator of the Cape Province, JG Carinus, was present at the opening. The old museum domicile had been acquired by the Technical College.
Between 1982 and 1983 there were larger extensions for exhibition areas , workshop areas and administration. The developments in the collection made further expansion necessary. With funds from the National Lottery Distribution Trust Fund (Lottery Foundation), a new magazine building and a new lecture hall were built in 2005. The official handover took place on June 22, 2006.
Collections
The collections and exhibition holdings are divided into three areas:
- Natural history collection
- This part of the collection includes objects from the fields of mammals , reptiles , ornithology , fish , molluscs and botany .
- Cultural and settlement history collection
- Evidence from the settlement history of the southern Nguni and San as well as the German and British immigrants are preserved and presented here.
- Maritime history collection
- This department deals with voyages of discovery , the development of the port of East London and shipwrecks and salvage in the event of marine disasters
There is a public specialist library and a lecture center in the museum.
Special exhibits
- Fossilized skull and skeletal remains of a Dicynodontia reptile Kannemeyeria simocephalus , originally Kannemeyeria wilsoni BROOM (Broom 1937) from Central Triassic sediments near Tarkastad , excavations between 1934 and 1936
- An extant coelacanth (coelancanth) Latimeria chalumnae , caught in the 1938th
- The world's oldest (dated 124,000 years old (2009, older measurements came to other dating)) fossil footprints of early humans from the time of Central and Upper Pleistocene , found in Aeolian formed sandstone deposits (calcareous dunes sandstone Nahoon formation / Algoa group ) on Nahoon Point in 1964.
Web links
- East London Museum: website . at www.elmuseum.za.org (English)
- National Archives and Records Service: East London Museum . at www.national.archives.gov.za (English) Brief description on the website of the South African National Archives (below)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Search term rattrayi
- ↑ Urs Eggli, Leonard E. Newton: Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names . Springer Science & Business Media, Berlin, Heidelberg 2004, ISBN 3-540-00489-0 , pp. 200 (English, 266 p., Limited preview in Google book search).
- ↑ List of Headmasters : 1904–1930 Dr George Rattray - Headmasters of Selborne College. Retrieved May 28, 2021 .
- ↑ About Selborne College. Accessed May 28, 2021 .
- ↑ Stirling High School: History (English)
- ↑ Port Rex Technical High School: Brief history ( Memento of the original dated February 22, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English)
- ↑ Govender Romala: Morphological and functional analysis of the postcranial anatomy of two Dicynodont morphotypes from the Cynognathus Assemblage Zone of South Africa and their taxonomic implications . (Wits-Diss.) 2007
- ^ A b Jacobs Zenobia, David L. Roberts: Last Interglacial Age for aeolian and marine deposits and the Nahoon fossil human footprints, Southeast Coast of South Africa . In: Quaternary Geochronology, Vol. 4 (2009), Issue 2, pp. 160-169, doi: 10.1016 / j.quageo.2008.09.002 .
- ↑ Environmental impact assessment for three proposed nuclear power station cities and associated infrastructure . Eskom 2010 Document p. 112 ( Memento of May 16, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ Edgar D. Mountain: Footprints in calcareous sandstone at Nahoon Point . in: South African Journal of Science, Volume 62 (1966), Number 4, pp. 103-111
- ↑ Images of the collection items in the museum ( Memento of the original dated December 4, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
Coordinates: 32 ° 59 ′ 42.77 ″ S , 27 ° 53 ′ 50.69 ″ E