Cathedrals of Technoscience: Museum Artefacts and the Construction of Technoscientific Narratives

This book explores science and technology museums as sites of knowledge production, where scientific and technological collections—the tangible and intangible traces of the history and present of science and technology—are transformed into “technoscientific narratives” through the care, interpretation, and display of museum artefacts. In Cathedrals of Technoscience, Roberta Spada examines the science and technology museum as a place in which technoscience, its histories, and the imaginaries surrounding them are constructed through engagement with material culture.

Through the metaphor of the cathedral, the author takes readers beyond the museum gallery, much as scholars in Science and Technology Studies (STS) have entered laboratories and factories: by following objects and heritage professionals into the practices that shape museal technoscience. Like cathedrals, museums are presented as symbolic spaces that balance authority—embodied in the grandeur of their architecture and collections—with a commitment to diverse communities, of which visitors are only one part.

At the heart of the book is the Museo Nazionale Scienza e Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci in Milan, Italy, and three artefacts connected to the history of radio technology under Italian fascism: a microphone, a transmitter, and a cigar box—a so-called “relic” associated with Guglielmo Marconi. Through this museum-cathedral, Spada shows how the practices of collecting, curating, and exhibiting enable museum artefacts and professionals to construct the narratives that shape our cultural relationship with technoscience and its history.