24 November 2023 | Conference History of Knowledge, Porto, PT

Paper Presentation:

Dulce da Rocha Gonçalves:

Public knowledge transmission in the Netherlands: the cultural phenomenon of the lantern lecture.

Conference organized by CITCEM (Transdisciplinary Research Centre “Culture, Space and Memory), based at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Porto, Portugal.

The full program can be accessed here.

Abstract:

Public lantern lectures, that is public lectures featuring the projection of images by means of a lantern, were once a ubiquitous activity within the Dutch social winter season. The popularity of this knowledge transmission practice in the Dutch context is characterized by a particularly distinctive feature: in the Netherlands, neither state nor academia were interested in providing structural popular adult education, in contrast to countries such as France and the United Kingdom. Rather, public lantern lectures were mainly organized by a myriad of associations and societies, which were aligned in one way or another with popular education and science dissemination.

However, the lantern was not always an accessible technology. The emergence of the lantern as a celebrated element of scientific performances in the Netherlands can be traced back to the second half of the nineteenth century. L. K. Maju’s lectures with dissolving views, imported from the London Polytechnic Institution were very popular scientific performances. Yet, it was not until the technology became more affordable and easier to use – with the mass-production of photographic lantern slides, the establishment of slide rental offices, as well as the expansion of the electricity grid coverage – that the lantern lecture became an activity within the reach of most organizations.

In the so-called “pillarized” Dutch society, organizations claiming neutrality regarding religion and politics (such as the Maatschappij tot Nut van ‘t Algemeen counting thousands of members and hundreds of departments across the country), as well as many specialized associations catering to groups with diverse social and religious beliefs, all showed interest in the lantern. Additionally, the lack of dedicated infrastructure along with the many organizers (and their audiences) contributed to the increasing visibility of the lantern lecture as a social activity integrated not only in a broader rhetorical space (framed by its association culture) but also in numerous social and physical spaces where other cultural activities took place, namely musical performances, literature recitals, social dancing, exhibitions, and film screenings. By the 1920s, the lantern lecture was almost a daily event of the social winter season, and it was deeply embedded into the cultural and social fabric of Dutch society.