Project 1. Liv Emma Thorsen: Animal biographies. On the unnatural history of animals*
The project examines a selection of stuffed animals, both wild and tame, from Western
European natural history collections, and analyzes them as, respectively, natural history
illustrations, cultural representations and actors with a biography. A common feature of
these animals in the sample is that they are "objects that speak" because, in the words of
science historian Lorraine Daston, they "knit together matter and meaning" (Daston
2004:10). She adds that the speech of objects is deduced from the particular
characteristics they have, properties that are suitable for the cultural purposes they are
part of. As physical natural history objects, they can be touched, moved, modified and
viewed, depending on their purpose. As natural history representations they mobilise
ideas and emotions. The stuffed animals resist any standard classification according to
their position as natural objects and cultural artefacts. They raise the question of what
kind of object they are, whether they are cultural artefacts, natural objects or rather
hybrids that mediate between nature and non-nature, where non-nature points in the
direction of natural science, as well as to art and ideas of the relation between man and
animals.
To address this complex question we first need knowledge about the specific
stuffed animal as an artefact and the outcome of a craft process. Taxidermy was
developed into a refined craft during the 19th century. Knowledge about preparation and
conservation of fur and feather has played an important role in the successful mediation
of natural history knowledge, and taxidermy was a vital supporting discipline in building
the zoological collections in the many natural history museums that were established in
the Western world at the end of the 19th century and the early 20th century (Löwegren
1978, Bodry-Sanders 1998, Star 1992). The dermoplastic method was developed by Carl
Akeley around 1900 and opened for manipulation of feather and fur that creates a
convincing illusion of life and nature that is rarely seen in older specimens. The more
lifelike a stuffed animal appears, the more fantastic it is. Thus stuffed animals belong
among chimeral objects that erase the line between life and death, between science and
art, between what is genuine and what is artificial (Daston 2004).
By transforming dead animals into specimens, taxidermy has been a craft that has
standardized natural history illustration and created genres dictating how wild animals
should be presented visually. There has also been a close connection between
representations of animals in art and in natural science (Irmscher 1999, Salvi 2000, Smith
and Findlen 2002, Wonders 1993). Stuffed animals bring together art and nature, and the
project will, secondly, examine how the animals move between art and science by
examining some concrete examples. In this connection it will be necessary to analyze
specific examples of natural history illustrations, not limiting this to stuffed animals but
also including illustrations in zoological manuals.
A third question that examines the relation between transformation, aesthetics and
conflict is related to the story of the animal’s wandering history and the connection
between the once living animal and the specimen: When and where did the animal live,
and how did it end up in a museum? A common factor of the selected specimens is that
they have a biography that unites the once alive animal with the now stuffed one. These
biographies illuminate the large field, on that in Scandinavian culture research has
received little attention, which we can call the "unnatural history" of wild animals, in
contrast to their "natural history" which deals with the animals as they have been
presented in natural history and in the museum of natural history (Rothfels 2002). Wild
animals are normally placed in natural history, in narratives about what is outside the
human domain. The animals’ narratives of their migration bring cultural history into the
museum of natural history and natural history into cultural history.
In extending this, the animals in the display cases become more than natural history
illustrations and representations. As sources of the unnatural history of animals they lead
us to the collecting practices of natural history museums, to circuses, menageries and
zoos. The unnatural history of animals is about the entrance into and performance of
exotic and wild animals in social and cultural arenas, and it reveals their earlier narratives
that have disappeared in the endeavours by the museums to present natural history as
correctly and with as much detail as possible.
*This project is part of “Animals as thing and animals as signs – standardisastion and
visualization of animals”, KULVER Programme, Norwegian Research Council.
Literature
Bodry-Sanders, Penelope 1998: African Obsession. Batx Museum Publishing: Jacksonville
Daston, Lorraine 2004: Things That Talk Object. Lessons from Art and Science. Zone Books:
New York
Irmscher, Christoph 1999: The Poetics of Natural History. From John Bartram to William James.
Rutgers University Press New Brunswick, New Jersey, and London
Löwegren, Yngve 1978: Forna tiders djurkonservering. [The conservation of animals in past
times] Kring Malmöhus. Malmö Museum årsbok. 3-32.
Rothfels, Nigel 2002b: Savages and Beasts. The Birth of the Modern Zoo. The John Hopkins
University Press: Baltimore & London
Salvi, Claudia 2002: Le Grand Livre des Animaux de Buffon. La Renaissance du Livre.
Smith, Pamela & Findlen, Paula 2002: Merchants & Marvels. Commerce, Science and Art in
Early Modern Europe. Routledge: New York and London
Star, Susan Leigh 1992: Craft vs. Commodity, Mess vs. Transcendence: How the Right Tool
Became the Wrong One in the Case of Taxidermy and Natural History. In: Adele E. Clarke and
Joan H. Fujimura: The Right Tools for the Job. At Work in Twentieth-Century Life Sciences.
Princeton University Press: Princeton New Jersey. S.257-287.
Wonders, Karen 1993: Habitat Dioramas. Illusions of Wilderness in Museums of Natural History.
Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis Figura Nova Series 25.