Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads The Culture and Evolution of Natural History Museums

by Asma, Stephen T.

• ISBN13: 9780195163360
• ISBN10: 0195163362
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-05-01
• 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	p. ix
Introduction	p. xi
Flesh-eating Beetles and the Secret Art of Taxidermy	p. 3
Peter the Great's Mysterious Jars: How to Pickle a Human Head and Other Great Achievements of the Scientific Revolution	p. 47
Taxonomic Intoxication, Part I: Visualizing the Invisible	p. 77
Taxonomic Intoxication, Part II: In Search of the Engine Room	p. 114
Exhibiting Evolution: Diversity, Order, and the Construction of Nature	p. 154
Evolution and the Roulette Wheel: A Chance Cosmos Rattles Some Bones	p. 202
Drama in Diorama: The Confederation of Art and Science	p. 240
Notes and Further Reading	p. 277
Index	p. 289
Table of Contents provided by Rittenhouse. All Rights Reserved.