Nature's Mirror

How Taxidermists Shaped America’s Natural History Museums and Saved Endangered Species

Inbunden, Engelska, 2020

409 kr

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It may be surprising to us now, but the taxidermists who filled the museums, zoos, and aquaria of the twentieth century were also among the first to become aware of the devastating effects of careless human interaction with the natural world. Witnessing firsthand the decimation caused by hide hunters, commercial feather collectors, whalers, big game hunters, and poachers, these museum taxidermists recognized the existential threat to critically endangered species and the urgent need to protect them. The compelling exhibits they created—as well as the scientific field work, popular writing, and lobbying they undertook—established a vital leadership role in the early conservation movement for American museums that persists to this day. Through their individual research expeditions and collective efforts to arouse demand for environmental protections, this remarkable cohort—including William T. Hornaday, Carl E. Akeley, and several lesser-known colleagues—created our popular understanding of the animal world and its fragile habitats. For generations of museum visitors, they turned the glass of an exhibition case into a window on nature—and a mirror in which to reflect on our responsibility for its conservation.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2020-11-20
Mått152 x 229 x 24 mm
Vikt513 g
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor264
FörlagThe University of Chicago Press
ISBN9780226730318

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Mary Anne Andrei is a three-time Heartland Emmy Award winner and senior producer for emerging media at NET Nebraska, the state’s PBS and NPR station. Her short film Return of the American Bison received a 2019 Heartland Emmy and her PBS Digital 360° video series Watershed won a 2020 Radio Television Digital News Association Regional Murrow Award and a 2020 Midwest Broadcast Journalists Association Eric Sevareid Award. Her photos have appeared in the Guardian, Harper’s Magazine, Mother Jones, and New Republic.

Introduction1 “A Gathering Place for Amateur Naturalists”: Ward’s and the Birth of the Habitat Group2 “Breathing New Life into Stuffed Animals”: The Society of American Taxidermists3 “The Destruction Wrought by Man”: Smithsonian Taxidermy and the Birth of Wildlife Conservation4 Competing Ideas, Competing Institutions: Decorative versus Scientific Taxidermy at the Carnegie and Field Museums5 “The Duty to Conserve”: Museums and the Fight to Save Endangered Marine Mammals6 “Brightest Africa”: Carl Akeley and the American Museum’s Race to Bring Africa to AmericaEpilogueAcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndex