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Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads: The Culture and Evolution of Natural History Museums (2001)

door Stephen T. Asma

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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 mus… (meer)
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Toon 5 van 5
SAaPH has been on my to-read list for quite a while (because there's only so many books available to a popular audience about preserving dead things in an academic setting), so when I saw it at a used bookstore had to jump on it. Until I started it, I didn't realize Asma was a philosophy professor which means a different perspective than other books on museology (such as Richard Fortey's [b:Dry Store Room No. 1: The Secret Life Of The Natural History Museum|2553092|Dry Store Room No. 1 The Secret Life Of The Natural History Museum|Richard Fortey|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1329723153s/2553092.jpg|2561339], by a trilobite specialist at the NHM in London).

A good survey on the history of natural history museums and how collections are shaped by the perspective of their curator (anyone who's taken evolutionary biology will recognize Cuvier's strict orderliness and Richard Owens' attempt to rein in the beautiful chaos of John Hunter's massive wet prep collection), Asma muddles a bit when he muses over how and what museums should be narrating to patrons, especially in America where evolution is still a controversial subject (even ten years after he initially published it, the statistics haven't changed much). Considering natural history museums are one of the oldest, widely accessible means of science communication his philosophical thoughts apply to those interested in bridging the understanding gap in other mediums.

This was published in 2001, so I'm wondering if Asma's written anything on more recent events like the Field reducing its research projects or Ken Ham's glorious monstrosity of the Creation Museum down in Kentucky. ( )
  Daumari | Dec 30, 2017 |
When I was a kid, my brother and I used to negotiate Saturday Los Angeles traffic on our bicycles in order to get to the Museum of Natural History of Los Angeles, where the great collection of dinosaur bones from the La Brea Tar pits were exhibited. (Now, many of them are in the Page Museum and elsewhere). The museum had lots of things besides the dinosaurs, though, and it was all fascinating to me. Steven Asma has written a terrific book about how natural history museums came to be, and how natural history became scientific. He kindles (or rekindles) the sense of curiosity that so often opens the eyes of young people to science, and does a great job of explaining how mankind came to understand our place in nature and in evolution. The "pickled heads" in the title refers to those of William Mons, lover of the wife of Peter the Great, and Mary Hamilton, Peter's own lover. Peter had them both executed and their heads preserved. They were kept for many years in the chambers of his wife, Catherine. Stephen Asma has stuffed "Stuffed Animals" with dozens of stories like this, mixed with solid intellectual history. ( )
  hcubic | Jan 27, 2013 |
If I have ever read a book that struck such an elegant balance between philosophical inquiry and sordid fascination with the grotesque as Stephen Asma's Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads, I certainly don't remember it. Asma's exploration of the evolution of modern-day natural history museums, from their primitive ancestors the medieval bestiaries, through Renaissance curiosity cabinets and the private, Enlightenment-era collections of proto-scientists, is perceptive and thought-provoking at every turn. It points out the moral and philosophical implications of curatorial decisions: things that are normally invisible to museum visitors, but which subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) communicate the agendas of their designers. It examines a selection of 18th-, 19th- and 20th-century curated collections, analyzing their presentation and, in the process, taking the reader on a fascinating journey through the history of collecting, classifying, and presenting widely differing versions of Nature in the West. But Asma's book also admits and even honors the darker instincts behind peoples' love of museums: our attraction to the unusual, bizarre, and just plain gross. And I think that's only right. There's no denying the pivotal role played by a prurient fascination with monstrosities, mutations, and myths on the road to science as we know it today. As Asma points out, "Oddities force us to attend. ... Museums figured this out a long time ago."


The jar that first drew my attention was about the size of an industrial stew pot and contained a curdled mass of flesh. This menacing basketball-sized blob was a tumor that John Hunter surgically removed from a man's neck in 1785 (fig. 2.8). Next to the jar was a small card quoting Hunter's notes: "The operation was performed on Monday, October the 24th, 1785; it lasted twenty-five minutes, and the man did not cry out during the whole of the operation." This poor patient had a tumor, roughly the size of his own head, sprouting out of his neck, and Hunter cut it out of him sixty-odd years before anesthesia was discovered - with nothing to numb the pain except some swigs of whiskey. As I pondered many of the pathology jars, I wanted to get on my knees and thank the gods of experimental medicine for letting me be born in the twentieth century.



In the first half of the nineteenth century England's intelligentsia was dominated by the "argument from design." Natural theologians were arguing that the natural world was perfectly adapted - each animal organ and appendage perfectly suited the peculiarities of different habitats and activities. Such perfect design, the argument concluded, proves the existence of a benevolent designer God. One of the overriding impressions that Hunter's pathology collection leaves on the observer, however, is that nature is sloppy. The notion of the perfect adaptation or fit of each animal to its environment and the elegantly coordinated physiological adaptation of each individual to itself (organs arranged and functioning in harmony) is dramatically challenged by Hunter's pathology jars.


As this passage illustrates, Asma moves from grotesque example to illuminating analytical observation, and the whole is delivered in a lively, readable prose. His book is structured, not in strict chronological order, but as a series of related investigative essays covering subjects from the development of taxidermy and embalming, to the history of taxonomy, to the national differences among modern presentations of evolutionary biology. His approach reminded me of an updated take on the 18th-century conversational essay - a form I very much enjoy, and one uniquely suited to Asma's subject matter, given the space he devotes to the Enlightenment-era collections of John Hunter and Georges Cuvier. His approachable prose is a real plus, since the reader is trying to wrap her head around radically different world-views throughout the book. At one point, while discussing a half-digested human stomach, Asma points out that in order to appreciate the specimen from an 18th-century point of view, we must imaginatively think ourselves back to an era when a purely mechanical mode of digestion was a possibility. This is actually quite difficult, since the role of stomach acid is so firmly entrenched in our minds. Similar thought experiments are necessary to grasp many of the pre-Darwinian stops along the track of natural philosophy, but Asma proves a capable conductor, endearingly enthusiastic about the human and scientific oddities he discovers along the way.

In his opening chapter, he observes that


Educational and entertainment institutions meet in the common-ground territory of the spectacular. But some spectacles lead to something cognitive or reflective, and the hope of the educator is to facilitate that trajectory. There is a place in that trajectory for the odd, the wonderful, and the grotesque. But some spectacles, using the same spectacular launching pads of human curiosity, only lead back to themselves. The thrill-ride spectacle can be "managed" in such a way that it leads to more of the same, not contemplation and reflection. The spectacle itself becomes the commodity.


In addition to being an accurate description of his own book, this strikes me as a sane and reasonable take on the "edutainment" debate vis-a-vis museums, which Asma tackles at greater length in his final chapter. While justly concerned about the effect on museums of alliances with corporate sponsors (i.e., how can a museum maintain objectivity in an exhibit about petroleum, if the primary source of funding is an oil company?), he lauds curatorial attempts to lighten the mood of exhibits, to teach with humor and not take themselves and their subject matter in deadly earnest. I think there is a tendency among people who stand up against "edutainment" (understood as entertainment without content), to look down on any exhibit that encourages people to laugh, or connect a scientific concept with some element of popular culture. But, as Asma rightly points out, studies show that laughter improves peoples' willingness and ability to remember information. It therefore seems backward to get sniffy about humorous exhibits, since there's a high likelihood they're doing a better job of teaching than their unfunny analogs, while simultaneously showing museum patrons a good time. Of course entertainment shouldn't be the only experience one finds in a museum, but Asma makes a strong point for it being one effective curatorial tool, and one that, perhaps, ought to be used more often, especially given the modern distrust of authority figures. When a museum can laugh at itself for a moment, he points out, it lets down its guard and becomes more relatable and sympathetic to patrons, and they in turn become more receptive to new ideas.

If used thoughtfully, spectacle and laughter can lead to contemplation; when used exploitatively, they only lead back to themselves. The spectacle in Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads was uniformly linked to fascinating ideas and information, and I'll be contemplating much of it for a long time to come.
1 stem emily_morine | Jul 7, 2009 |
(#21 in the 2006 book challenge)

Oh boy, this was awesome. First though, I would like to say WTF about the title, that is just the worst title ever. I am not opposed to the sensational inclusion of the pickled heads, in fact, I am pro-pickled head in general, but that title has no flow or cadence whatsoever. ANYWAY, this is a nifty little book about the history of Natural History collections and displays. It spends a lot of time on the earliest days of natural history (good stuff about the Royal Society, bringing Quicksilver to mind), and then, probably obviously, a good bit on Darwin, and then the last third compares four major natural history museums, and the author does a good job of demonstrating what each of the exhibit styles communicates about the philosophies and priorities of the individual institution. The four museums are London's Natural History Museum, the Grand Gallerie d'Evolution, the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and Chicago's Field Museum.. In addition, he talks about a lot of smaller collections, like the Huntarian Museum in London (I can't imagine how I missed this), and frankly, a lot of the best parts are when he talks about the more bizarre aspects of preserving organs in jars for hundreds of years. He does go off on a long tangent about evolution v. creationism, which is kind of a yawner (but sincere and well-intentioned) because it's nothing we haven't heard before and come on, I want more pickled heads in jars.

The one small disappointment I suffered (This mortal realm is all about suffering, isn't it? Earlier today I dropped my last M&M on the ground outside.) is that the book promises to be about the history of natural history museums and a comparison of the four museums previously listed. Which it is. But it turns out that the book has one part about the history of natural history museums, meaning more the 18th century, and then another part with the comparison of the four museums in the present day. I was hoping for more information about those particular museums throughout their pasts. I loved going to the natural history museum when I was a kid, because it seemed so old, although I realize now that what I liked was the 1920s vibe about a lot of the exhibits, when things were very straightforward and academic and dry and yet optimistic, like WE HAVE NOW MASTERED SCIENCE, THANK YOU, and then you get the 1930s when there's a WPA feel overlaying everything, so now it's the mastery of science for the GOOD OF THE PUBLIC TRUST. Halls were marble and dioramas were dusty and you had to be quiet, the way God intended (yes, I get the irony). In the science museum I grew up with, the rooms were always a little dark and had a faint smell of formaldehyde and there was this one excellent room where you would creep up to a display that seemed to be empty, only then you realized you needed to look up, and when you did, you saw the body of some mutant giant sea crab that looked like a space alien looming over you, and I would repeat giant because this was easily larger than a child, and it was most effective for making you jump out of your skin. See, when a room is brightly lit, and has a lot of noise, and monitors that play videos when you push buttons, the freaky impact of the mutant giant sea crab is greatly diminished.

Grade: A
Recommended: to people who like museums and thinking about curatorship, and people who like pickled heads.
  delphica | Aug 31, 2006 |
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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 mus

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