Product Description

This volume traces the cultural history of natural history museums from their origins in the 18th century through the present day, by tracing the changing attitudes and philosophies that influence the public displays of major natural history museums. The author includes anecdotes and stories, showing the development over time from displays of individual collectors' curios and occasionally gruesome oddities, to the more politically sensitive and intellectually ambitious exercises in public education that constitute the modern day permanent exhibitions at museums. The dichotomy between the front window, exhibit portion of natural history museums, and the backstage areas where scientific work goes forward, and the dual roles and missions served by this cultural institution, are all portrayed.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1061723 in Books
• Published on: 2004-10-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Science museums can be illuminating, exciting, and disturbing--just like the collectors that make them possible. In Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads: The Culture and Evolution of Natural History Museums Scholar Stephen T. Asma turns his professional curiosity about preserving bodies into an engrossing, wide-ranging exploration of the nature of these places and their curators. He brings a refreshing vitality to a subject usually thought boring, if not morbid. Asma's writing ranges from expositive to chatty and occasionally feels like a travelogue or memoir as he investigates the American Museum of Natural History, the Galerie d'anatomie comparée, and other collections in the US and Europe; this informality keeps the reader engaged throughout. Referring to the process of skeletonising specimens--while maintaining his hold on all but the most sensitive--he writes:

I stepped into the foulest, most pestiferous stench you can imagine ... Inside each tank were thousands of dermestid beetles, otherwise known as flesh-eating beetles, blissfully chewing the meaty chunks and strands off the bones. Each bug was no bigger than a watermelon seed, but en masse they could strip a skeleton clean in two short days.

To Asma's credit, the bulk of the text is less a gross-out festival than a consideration of the hard, sometimes obsessive work of the men and women behind the displays. He examines the role of museums and collectors in the great evolutionary debates of the 19th and 20th centuries, and the future of these institutions as they come more and more to depend on corporate largesse. Equally enlightening and entertaining, Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads is a perfectly exhibited specimen. --Rob Lightner

Review
"After reading this book museum-goers will not be able to look at exhibits in the same way again", avows the author. He could be right New Scientist As full of curious facts and mental treats as any museum display, this fascinating book shows there is more behind the museum facade than a few busy biologists New Scientist

New Scientist
"As full of curious facts and mental treats as any museum display, this fascinating book shows there is more behind the museum facade than a few busy biologists"