Stuffed Animals & Pickled Heads: The Culture and Evolution of Natural History MuseumsThe natural history museum is a place where the line between "high" and "low" culture effectively vanishes--where our awe of nature, our taste for the bizarre, and our thirst for knowledge all blend happily together. But as Stephen Asma shows in Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads, there is more going on in these great institutions than just smart fun. Asma takes us on a wide-ranging tour of natural history museums in New York and Chicago, London and Paris, interviewing curators, scientists, and exhibit designers, and providing a wealth of fascinating observations. We learn how the first museums were little more than high-toned side shows, with such garish exhibits as the pickled head of Peter the Great's lover. In contrast, today's museums are hot-beds of serious science, funding major research in such fields as anthropology and archaeology. "Rich in detail, lucid explanation, telling anecdotes, and fascinating characters.... Asma has rendered a fascinating and credible account of how natural history museums are conceived and presented. It's the kind of book that will not only engage a wide and diverse readership, but it should, best of all, send them flocking to see how we look at nature and ourselves in those fabulous legacies of the curiosity cabinet."--The Boston Herald. |
Contents
FLESHEATING BEETLES THE SECRET ART TAXIDERMY | xviii |
PETER THE GREATS MYSTERIOUS JARS How TO PICKLE A HUMAN HEAD AND OTHER GREAT ACHIEVEMENTS SCIENTIFIC REVOLU... | 47 |
TAXONOMIC INTOXICATION PART I VISUALIZING THE INVISIBLE | 77 |
TAXONOMIC INTOXICATION PART II IN SEARCH THEENGINE ROOM | 114 |
EXHIBITING EVOLUTION DIVERSITY ORDER AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF NATURE | 154 |
Other editions - View all
Stuffed Animals & Pickled Heads: The Culture and Evolution of Natural ... Stephen T. Asma Limited preview - 2003 |
Common terms and phrases
actually adaptation Alan Alan's American Museum AMNH anatomy animal archaeopteryx argued artistic believed biology birds bones Boyle Buffon causal century chapter characters Chicago cladistics claims classification contemporary creature culture curators curiosity cabinets Darwin dinosaurs dioramas display dissection drawing early edited edutainment environment Eric evolutionary example exhibit experience explained fact Field Museum Figure Foma forms fossil French function Galerie genetic Gould homologies human Hunter's collection Hunterian idea images John Hunter John Ray Jonas Brothers kind Lamarck Linnaeus logical London mammals ment mind moral museology Museum of Natural mutation natural history museums natural selection naturalists objective ontological organisms Origin of Species original patrons philosophers physiology plants Press Royal Society Rymsdyk scientific scientists seems sense similar skeleton skin skull species specimens structures stuffed taxidermy taxonomists taxonomy things tion traits understand University vertebrate visitors visual