Taxidermy: history, art and culture
ListenGuests: Rachel Poliquin, Beth Beverly
Walk into any natural history museum and you’ll see the animal dioramas – lions prowling the African veldt, a herd of buffalo on an American prairie, a polar bear towering over a dead seal. And, in hunting lodges, and even home décor, an animal’s head might be mounted on the wall. For years people have stuffed and mounted animals to display as science, art or a trophy. This hour, we explore the history and art of taxidermy with RACHEL POLIQUIN, curator and the author of “The Breathless Zoo: Taxidermy and the Cultures of Longing” and BETH BEVERLY, a taxidermist and artist and owner of Diamond Tooth Taxidermy in Philadelphia.
Bryndis Snaebjornsdottir and Mark Wilson, Somerset, from Nanoq: Flat Out and Bluesome, 2004. Photo courtesy of the artists.
Flat storage of study skins in the Birds Division at the Smithsonian Museum, Washington, D.C. Photo © Chip Clark / Smithsonian Institution.
Talon Necklace (photo credit James Coughlin)
(Left) Chicken Matador Hat, 2012 (Photo credit James Coughlin); (Right) The Bobby Hat, 2012 (Photo credit James Coughlin)
Bill Bill, 2012 (Photo credit Beth Beverly)
Rabbit Head Fascinator, 2011 (Photo credit James Coughlin)
Self Portrait piece for Immortalized; kitten inside a coyote. (photo credit Beth Beverly)
Nineteenth-century hummingbird case on display in the Birds Gallery of the Natural History Museum, London. Photo © Natural History Museum, London.
Two ocelots in the Museum für Naturkunde. Photo courtesy of Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin.
The African lion diorama in Akeley Hall of African Mammals, American Museum of Natural History, New York. The scene depicts the Serengeti Plain, east of Lake Victoria, Tanzania. Photo courtesy of Asterio Tecson.
Taxidermy lion, ceramics, and glass. Photo by Karin Nussbaumer. Courtesy of the artists and the National Museum of Oslo.
Life and Nice, from Iris Schieferstein’s Life Can Be So Nice, 2001. Animal parts, glass, formalin, distilled water. Photo by Stephan Rabold. Courtesy of the artist.
Life and Nice, from Iris Schieferstein’s Life Can Be So Nice, 2001. Animal parts, glass, formalin, distilled water. Photo by Stephan Rabold. Courtesy of the artist.
John Everett Millaia, The Ornithologist (formerly The Ruling Passion), 1865. Oil on canvas. Photo courtesy of Glasgow Museums, Art Gallery and Museum, Kelvingrove, Scotland.
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