IMAGERY OF TAXIDERMY IN SCIENCE MUSEUMS: FROM SYSTEMATICS OF SPECIES TO SYSTEMATICITY OF VIOLENCE AND POSTHUMANIST NATURE
DOI: 10.23951/2312-7899-2020-2-91-130
The article is devoted to the transformations of the imagery of taxidermic objects in natural history museums. By examining several cases these transformations are linked to changes in a network of heterogeneous contexts - scientific theories and paradigms, the role of the museum, national politics, and public morals. While discussing the topic a taxidermic object is understood as an object of science with its own materiality and history and science museum is considered as a space for the representation of nature, scientific categories, and moral and political ideas, and as an instrument of collective empiricism. The history of taxidermy in a museum is the history of erasing its artistry and artificiality in favor of an objective representation of nature “itself". This naturalization makes it possible to turn the stuffed animal, now anonymous and standardized, into a taxon of Linnaean taxonomy, inseparable from considerations of public resource management. The consequences of such entry into the museum for the visual nature of taxidermy are written out. Next, we consider the change in taxonomy in the XIX century and the introduction of the idea of life in taxidermic exposition through dioramas and biological groups. A concrete example demonstrates the use of taxidermic dioramas as a tool for moral and political transformation of individuals through the aura-like experience of nature. In the middle of the XX century, the decline of taxidermy begins. Due to the withdrawal of up-to-date science from natural history museums, changes in politics, collective imagination, and the ethics of dealing with colonial heritage and nature, museums are losing funding and visitors and are gradually shifting to the periphery of culture. It is shown that they find themselves in a twice contradictory position between their own anti-historical and naturalizing scientific nature and the historicity of denaturalized exhibits, between the ambiguous aesthetics, history of taxidermy and the changed moral order. Museums tried to resolve these contradictions and return to the current culture by including in the communication about the environmental agenda and the environmental reinterpretation of taxidermy exposition with the help of occasional material and discursive interventions that turn stuffed animals into allegories of extinction. This move allows them to stay within the boundaries of the natural science discourse of preservation species diversity, while simultaneously appealing to the moral sense of the visitor and influencing the collective sensibility. At the same time, it reproduces the mythologem of the "golden age", based on the opposition between nature and culture, natural and artificial. Thus, these contradictions are not completely resolved. The first possible way further are artistic interventions on the territory of the museum, in which the Museum delegates to artists the right of critical reflection on scientific ideology and power. A number of examples of such interventions are provided and analyzed. The second way are new taxidermy collections, initially created not as a result of the objectifying approach of science, but as a manifestation of systematic violence and a new nature, indifferent to the above-mentioned oppositions. Such taxidermy can become a tool for understanding the new nature in an era so aptly called the anthropocene, and a working object of posthumanistic imagery.
Keywords: science museum, natural history museum, taxidermy, exposition, nature, visuality, contemporary art, posthumanism
References:
Aloi, G. (2018) Speculative Taxidermy: Natural History, Animal Surfaces, and Art in the Anthropocene. New York.
Andrews, E.L. (2013) Interpreting Nature: Shifts in the Presentation and Display of Taxidermy in Contemporary Museums in Northern England (PHD thesis). Leeds.
Bateman, V. (2013) Why Look at Dead Animals? Taxidermy in Contemporary Art (MA thesis). Toronto.
Benjamin, W. (2012) Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit. Transl. into Russian. The mimesis doctrine. Media-aesthetic works. Moscow. (In Russian).
Bennet, J. (1998) Can Science Museums Take History Seriously? The politics of display: museums, science, culture. Ed. By S. MacDonald. London. P.149-157.
Berger, J. (2017) Why look at animals? Transl. into Russian. Nosorog.Vol. 5. P. 11-27. (In Russian).
Bezan, S. (2019) The Endling Taxidermy of Lonesome George: Iconographies of Extinction at the End of the Line. Configurations. Vol. 27. No. 2. P.211-238.
Boyd, W. (1999) Museums as Centers of Controversy. Daedalus. No. 3. P. 185-228.
Daston, L. (2000) Preternatural Philosophy. Biographies of scientific objects. Ed. By L. Daston. Chicago. P. 15-41.
Daston, L. (2019) Against Nature. Cambridge, MA : MIT Press.
Daston, L. & Galison, P. (2018) Objectivity. Transl. into Russian. Moscow.
Daston, L. & Lunbeck E. (eds.) (2011) Histories of Scientific Observation. Chicago; London.
Daston, L. (2000) Introduction. The Coming Into Being of Scientific Objects. Biographies of scientific objects. Ed. By L. Daston. Chicago. P.1-14.
Daston, L. (2019) The Accidental Trace and the Science of the Future: Tales from the NineteenthCentury Archives. Photo-Objects: On the Materiality of Photographs and Photo Archives in the Humanities and Sciences. Ed. by J. Bärnighausen J. et al. Berlin. P.83-90.
Forgan, S. (2005) Building the Museum: Knowledge, Conflict, and the Power of Place. Isis. Vol. 96. No. 4. P.572-585.
Foucault, M. (1994) Les mots et les choses. Transl. into Russian. Saint-Petersburg.
Friedman, A. (2010) The Evolution of Science Museums. Physics Today. Vol.63. No. 10. P. 45-51.
Galison, P. (2002) Images Scatter Into Data, Data Gather Into Images. Iconoclash: Beyond the Image Wars in Science, Religion and Art. Ed. by B. Latour, P. Weibel. Cambridge, Massachusetts. P. 300-323.
Haraway, D. (1984-1985) Teddy Bear Patriarchy: Taxidermy in the Garden of Eden, New York City, 1908-1936. Social Text. No.11. P. 20-64.
ICOM. (2013) ICOM Code of Ethics for Natural History Museums.
Koerner, L. (1999) Linnaeus: Nature and nation. Cambridge (MA).
Latour, B. (2000) On the Partial Existence of Existing and Nonexisting Objects. Biographies of scientific objects. Ed. By L. Daston. Chicago. P.247-269.
Lyubarsky, G. (2015) The origin of science. Analytical morphology, classification system, scientific method. Moscow, 2015. (In Russian).
Lyubarsky, G. (2020) The origin of a new kind of science from the life sciences. Logos. Vol. 1. P.131-158. (In Russian).
Müller-Wille, S. (2003) Nature as a Marketplace: The Political Economy of Linnaean Botany. Oeconomies in the Age of Newton. Ed. by N. de Marchi, M. Schabas. Durham, NC. P.155-73.
Pisarev, A. (2018) On the history of science museums: what do exhibits visualize? (A case of the Hall of African Mammals in the American museum of natural history. ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. Vol. 4(18). P.202-221. (In Russian).
Poliquin, R. (2008) The Matter and Meaning of Museum Taxidermy. Museum and Society. Vol. 6 (2). P.123-134.
Poliquin, R. (2012) The Breathless Zoo: Taxidermy and the Culture of Longing. University Park.
Quell, M. (2018) A Dutch Exhibit Highlights Startling and Unusual Animal Deaths. Atlas Obscura. 4.04.2018. [Online] Available from: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/dead-animals-museum. (Accessed: 26.02.2020).
Rader, K. & Cain, V. (2008) From Natural History to Science: Display and the Transformation of American Museums of Science and Nature. Museum and Society. No.6 (2). P.152-171.
Rech, D. (2019) A Museum Has Draped Its Wildlife Exhibits in Shrouds to Highlight the Extinction Crisis. CNN. Style. 15.08.2019. [Online] Available from: https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/animal-exhibits-mourn-bristol-intl-scli-scn/index.html (Accessed: 26.02.2020).
Rheinberger, H.-J. (2000) Cytoplasmic Particles: the Trajectory of a Scientific Object. Biographies of Scientific Objects. Ed. By L. Daston. Chicago. P.270-294.
Slepkova, N.V. (2017) The Zoological museum in St. Petesburg and the development of taxonomy: 300 years of changes. Museum. Monument. Heritage. Vol. 1. P.7-17. (In Russian).
( 1.32 MB ) 
( 1.3 MB )
Issue: 2, 2020
Series of issue: Issue 2
Rubric: ARTICLES
Pages: 91 — 130
Downloads: 1107