Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads The Culture of Natural History Museums

by Asma, Stephen T.

• ISBN13: 9780195130508
• ISBN10: 0195130502
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-04-05
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

The 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 .

Author Biography

Stephen T. Asma is Professor of Philosophy and Interdisciplinary Humanities at Columbia College, in Chicago. He has written articles on a broad range of topics that bridge the humanities and sciences, including pieces in Chronicle of Higher Education and The Humanist, and he is a regular contributor to Skeptic Magazine. The author of the bestselling Buddha for Beginners, he lives in Chicago.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction	xi
Flesh-eating Beetles and the Secret Art of Taxidermy	3	(44)
Peter the Great's Mysterious Jars: How to Pickle a Human Head and Other Great Achievements of the Scientific Revolution	47	(30)
Taxonomic Intoxication, Part I: Visualizing the Invisible	77	(37)
Taxonomic Intoxication, Part II: In Search of the Engine Room	114	(40)
Exhibiting Evolution: Diversity, Order, and the Construction of Nature	154	(48)
Evolution and the Roulette Wheel: A Chance Cosmos Rattles Some Bones	202	(38)
Drama in Diorama: The Confederation of Art and Science	240	(37)
Notes and Further Reading	277	(12)
Index	289