page_title: William Henry Flower
section_title: Natural History Museum
hierarchical_section_title: William Henry Flower / Natural History Museum
caption_attribution_description: English: Statue of Charles Darwin in the Natural History Museum, London. The statue was created by Sir Joseph Boehm and was unveiled on 9 June 1885.
context_page_description: Sir William Henry Flower KCB FRS FRCS was an English surgeon, museum curator and comparative anatomist, who became a leading authority on mammals and especially on the primate brain. He supported Thomas Henry Huxley in an important controversy with Richard Owen about the human brain and eventually succeeded Owen as Director of the Natural History Museum in London.
context_section_description: In 1884, on the retirement of Sir Richard Owen, he was appointed to the directorship of what were then the Natural History departments of the British Museum in South Kensington. The four departments of Zoology, Botany, Mineralogy and Geology each had its own Keeper, who was largely autonomous from the Director, who was himself subject to the Principal Librarian and to the Trustees of the British Museum. Facing a wide array of personalities to contend with and a heavy load of administrative duties, he was a more or less instant success, testifying to his strong but tactful personality.
  In 1889 he showed his devotion by installing a statue of Charles Darwin in the Museum. In that year he was chosen as President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, having previously headed  its biological section in 1878 and its anthropological section in 1881 (being chosen again in 1894). In 1893 he served as President of the Museums Association.
  In 1895, in addition to his role as Director he took over the post of Keeper of Zoology, holding it until his retirement. He immediately set about rearranging the zoological galleries according to the theories he had evolved on effective presentation by de-cluttering the exhibits, ensuring each specimen had an easy-to-read label, and placing each stuffed animal beside its skeleton and remains of its extinct allies in order to give the displays depth and context.
caption: Statue of Darwin in the Natural History Museum
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