Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads: The Culture and Evolution of Natural History Museums
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The natural history museum is a place where the line between "high" and "low" culture effectively vanishes—where our awe of nature, our taste for the bizarre, and our thirst for knowledge all blend happily together. But as Stephen Asma shows in Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads, there is more going on in these great institutions than just smart fun.
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Asma takes us on a wide-ranging tour of natural history museums in New York and Chicago, London and Paris, interviewing curators, scientists, and exhibit designers, and providing a wealth of fascinating observations. We learn how the first museums were little more than high-toned side shows, with such garish exhibits as the pickled head of Peter the Great's lover. In contrast, today's museums are hot-beds of serious science, funding major research in such fields as anthropology and archaeology.
"Rich in detail, lucid explanation, telling anecdotes, and fascinating characters.... Asma has rendered a fascinating and credible account of how natural history museums are conceived and presented. It's the kind of book that will not only engage a wide and diverse readership, but it should, best of all, send them flocking to see how we look at nature and ourselves in those fabulous legacies of the curiosity cabinet."—The Boston Herald.
Liked Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads: The Culture and Evolution of Natural History Museums? Here’s where I’d start.
These suit anyone who liked Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads: The Culture and Evolution of Natural History Museums. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.
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Dry Store Room No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum Shares nonfiction, science, museums -
Dinosaurs in the Attic: An Excursion into the American Museum of Natural History Shares nonfiction, science, museums -
Kingdom Under Glass: A Tale of Obsession, Adventure, and One Man's Quest to Preserve the World's Great Animals Shares nonfiction, science, museums -
Still Life: Adventures in Taxidermy Shares nonfiction, science, museums
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The Breathless Zoo: Taxidermy and the Cultures of Longing
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Mr. Hornaday's War: How a Peculiar Victorian Zookeeper Waged a Lonely Crusade for Wildlife That Changed the World
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The Authentic Animal: Inside the Odd and Obsessive World of Taxidermy
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The Fossil Hunter: Dinosaurs, Evolution, and the Woman Whose Discoveries Changed the World
“If you want more of the same (science about nature), start with these.”
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The Rarest of the Rare: Stories Behind the Treasures at the Harvard Museum of Natural History
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Mr. Wilson's Cabinet Of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology
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Windows on Nature: The Great Habitat Dioramas of the American Museum of Natural History
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The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics
