Postmortem exhibitions: Taxidermied animals and plastinated corpses in the theaters of the dead

Configurations

Volumn 16, Issue 3, 2008, Pages 347-377

  Desmond, Jane ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA CHAMPAIGN   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 77949320974     PISSN: 10631801     EISSN: 10806520     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/con.0.0062     Document Type: Article

References (55)

1. I thank Sharon Lakes for research assistance relating to von Hagens. For more information on Body Worlds, visit its official website at www.bodyworlds.com. Throughout this essay I will use the terms "animal" and "human" rather than "human and nonhuman animals" to emphasize the functioning of the conceptual divide between the categories.
2. Ward's Natural Science Establishment continued to be an important institution until the early decades of the twentieth century, when museums started adding taxidermists to their staffs, thereby reducing the need for already-prepared specimens. In the late 1920s, the Ward family donated the institution to the University of Rochester, but it returned to the family during the 1940s and transformed itself into a leading supplier of biological materials for the educational market. For more on this, see the University of Rochester's website at www.library.rochester.edu/index.cfm?page=1181.
3. George Shrosbree, "The Scientific Development of Taxidermy and Its Effect upon Museums," Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters Transactions 16:1 (1908-1909): 343-346, quote on p. 344.
4. For an overview of Muybridge's contribution to photography and our understandings of the biomechanics of movement, see the online exhibition "Freeze Frame: Capturing the Moment," presented by the National Museum of American History (http//:amerianhistory.si.edu/muybridge/htm).
5. Leading taxidermist Carl Akeley himself also worked in film, inventing a portable motion-picture camera specifically designed to be used in fieldwork; see Mark Alvey, "The Cinema as Taxidermy: Carl Akeley and the Preservative Obsession," Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media 48:1 (2007): 23-45.
6. For a full consideration of film and animal watching, see Cynthia Chris, Watching Wildlife (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006).
7. Donna Haraway, "Teddy Bear Patriarchy: Taxidermy in the Garden of Eden, New York City, 1908-1936," Social Text 11 (1984-1985): 20-64.
8. See Rachel Poliquin, "The Matter and Meaning of Museum Taxidermy," Museum and Society 6:2 (2008): 123-134, esp. p. 127.
9. Haraway, "Teddy Bear Patriarchy" (above, n. 5).
10. Sam Curtis, Elizabeth Majthenyl, and Lionel Atwill, "Whatever Happened to Taxidermy?" Field and Stream, August 1994, p. 62.
11. Still very active today, the National Taxidermy Association sponsors seminars, competitions, and publications. It unites a network of professionals, part-timers, and hobbyists while disseminating information about taxidermy schools, suppliers, and legal regulations regarding hunting and importing/ mounting of endangered species. In fact, while I was starting this essay, an officer from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) appeared at my door to check my freezer for any illegal animal corpses. Having recently obtained a taxidermy license (which, like a fishing license, gives the right to practice, but does not certify competence), I was subject to inspection. Although not practicing taxidermy, I needed the license to attend the Iowa Taxidermy Association's annual meeting and seminars.
12. Some artists like Damien Hirst and Annette Messager use taxidermy in their art installations as well. See Steve Baker's The Postmodern Animal (London: Reaktion Press, 2000) for a discussion of animals in these artists' art.
13. Similar practices were popular in some Victorian taxidermy also, playing on the potential for humor and satire by substituting animals for human actors in vignettes. Mr. Potter's Museum of Curiosities in England, featuring hundreds of taxidermied animals in human-like scenes prepared by Victorian taxidermist Walter Potter, is one of the most famous. Scenes include rabbits attending school and kittens playing croquet. The collection was sold a few years ago by Bonham's Auction House in London at a record price of more than £500,000, as reported by BBC News, "Curiosity Auction Makes 500,000 Pounds." 2003. http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk- news/england/cornwall/3131144.stm.
14. The recent move to fish replicas-fiberglass bodies painted to look like a particular fish, but containing no fish parts whatsoever-also begins to challenge taxidermy's reliance on the masking of death and the display of skin, but this is a very small part of the market and lacks the status of large mammal taxidermy.
15. See, for example, works by the artists of the Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists (M.A.R.T.) at www.roguetaxidermy.com.
16. Sarina J. Brewer, Nate Hall, and Scott Bibus are three of the artists involved. Mounts include a two-headed baby chick, a griffin combining bird head and wings with half of a cat body, and a bloody-mouthed beaver chewing on a (fake) human finger.
17. Jane Desmond, "Displaying Death/Animating Life: Changing Fictions of 'Liveness' from Taxidermy to Animatronics," in Representing Animals, ed. Nigel Rothfells (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002), pp. 159-179.
18. Awards banquet, Iowa Taxidermists Association, April 23, 2005, Des Moines (emphasis added).
19. Information obtained at the "Strutting Turkey" workshop, which I attended at the 2005 World Taxidermy Championships in Springfield, Illinois.
20. Comment by expert taxidermist Jason Snowberger during his presentation at the "Super Seminar" at the 2005 World Taxidermy Championships.
21. Overheard at the 2005 World Taxidermy Championships.
22. One expert I observed leading a squirrel-mounting seminar at the championships advises blowing a squirrel with an air compressor to get that "alive fluffy look," and then using a clean mascara brush to comb the delicate hairs around the eyes. The final coiffure is held in place with hairspray. These techniques were demonstrated at the seminar by Amy Ritchie.
23. Iowa Taxidermists Association's twenty-first annual competition, April 2005, Des Moines.
24. Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary.
25. Marcus Zimmerman, leading the "Super Seminar" at the 2005 World Taxidermy Championships.
26. Ibid..
27. I discuss this aspect of zoos in chapter 4 of my book, Staging Tourism: Bodies on Display from Waikiki to Sea World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).
28. Categories for "reproductions" and "recreations" also exist but draw few entrants, indicating their minor standing and marginal status in a field that depends on the authenticating presence of the animal body. Reproductions must be originally molded by the entrant; recreations can use some natural materials, but not those of the species portrayed. For instance, a recreation of an eagle could be constructed using turkey feathers, or a cowhide could be used to portray a zebra. These exceptions, like the popular fish-carving championships, emphasize the artistry of the competitor over the authenticity of the skin. They attract relatively few entrants and little press, underscoring the continuing centrality of the animal skin.
29. The 2005 World Taxidermy Championships program, "Rules and Regulations," p. 15.
30. One 2005 winning entry, "Best in World Large Gamehead," goes counter to this assertion: a massive elk head is supported on a bronze arrow that, if the mount were full body, would pierce its heart. But the specifics of the mount make this arrow metaphorical, marking the act of hunting though still distanced from an actual kill scene.
31. Competitors at the World Taxidermy Championships are allowed to include "reference photos" of living animals or of the animal just after death to provide evidence for the specific choices they have made, such as the placement of ear-butt attachments. And criteria are stricter for competition work than for commercial work. Seminars instruct taxidermists in two different approaches: how to do something acceptable for commercial work, and how it must be done for competitions. For example, one instructor explained that she doesn't sew up all the buckshot holes in a duck torso if the wings will cover them, but such a method would be inappropriate for competitions. Another commented that some taxidermists purposely use incorrect eye sizes to obtain an effect they want for their customers, but which would be inappropriate for competitions.
32. Information from the judging criteria for the "Collective Artists Division" in the 2005 World Taxidermy Championships program, "Rules and Regulations," p. 17.
33. Ibid., p. 16.
34. Taxidermy melds craftsmanship and manual skills with artistic expression, and most often, for commercial taxidermists, is based on the mounting of hunting trophies-trophies procured mainly through hunting by men. To the extent that emotional expressivity is associated with the arts and disassociated from manliness in lower-middle-class communities in the United States, taxidermy may provide a more acceptable artistic outlet than, say, painting. That it is a potential profession as well as a part-time hobby, bringing money into the household, adds to this allure and legitimizes it as a way for men to spend their time. Such practicality can also trump any notions of artistic expression as self-indulgent feminized behavior.
35. A call for donations to fight anti-hunting organizations like PETA and the U.S. Humane Society was made during the 2005 awards banquet at the Iowa State Taxidermy Championships by a speaker from the Iowa Trappers League, but his vehemence seemed out of tune with the more relaxed tenor of the event and did not generate a vociferous response. The only defensiveness of the practice of taxidermy, when it appears, is in the assertion that taxidermy is an "art" and should be accorded the respect that such a category garners. Although the notion of a "championship" casts the work as more of a sporting event than art show, the major taxidermy magazine, the glossy Breakthrough: The Magazine for the Serious Wildlife Artist-one of the main sponsors of the championships-highlights this aspiration. The potentially feminizing idea of "art" and the perceived dangers or discomfort this association might suggest to the predominantly male practitioners are negated through an association with the wild-the "wild" in wildlife.
36. At the World Taxidermy Championships, competitors are allowed to submit photographs of the dead animal they have mounted, and also pictures documenting an animal's live poses.
37. In discussions at the 2005 World Taxidermy Championships, however, some confessed that they would do this exaggeration if a client insisted on it, but only in commercial work, and never in professional exhibition taxidermy for competitions.
38. Colonial relations played out in nineteenth-century world's fairs placed some colonized peoples in the same category of "available to be looked at" exhibits as animal exhibits. While prohibitions against or demands for looking at someone or something are historically, culturally, and context-specific, it is safe to assume that hierarchical distinctions play a complex role in these visual economies.
39. Adam Tanner, "Lucky Stiff," National Review 7 (1994): 33-34. Lenin was looking watery though still intact when I saw him in January 2001.
40. "Black Man Who Died 66 Years Ago Is Finally Buried," Jet Magazine, August 1994, pp. 56-59.
41. Diane Haithman, "The State: Exhibition on the Human Body Gets Under People's Skin," Los Angeles Times, June 26, 2004.
42. Laura Casey, "'Body Worlds' Exhibit Looks Inside Human Body," Alameda (Calif.) Times-Star, July 27, 2004.
43. Diane Haithman, "Arts Notes: Hey Mister, Do You Want My Body?" Los Angeles Times, July 25, 2004.
44. In the spring of 2005, Body Worlds moved to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago to run through September 5, 2005. A second exhibit, Body Worlds II, with different plastinates, returned to that site in 2007 for another successful engagement.
45. John Bohannon, Ding Yimin, and Xiong Lei, "Anatomy's Full Monty," Science 301:5637 (2003): 1172.
46. Haithman, "The State" (above, n. 38).
47. The majority by far of these plastinates are male. While I have not determined the reasons for this yet, one of the effects may be to subtly insist that the human scientific "norm" remains male. I thank Susan McHugh for raising this question. In addition, the exhibit features a few animals, such as a rabbit, in an acetate-filled case, stripped of its skin and injected with red dye so that we can see the complicated brachiation of the nervous system. Another animal exhibit features a horse and rider, both plastinated. The horse body is impressive, in part because of the sheer size of its muscles, which dwarf ours. But the animals are not the draw, they are subsidiary. In conversations I had with those who attended, all said that if the exhibit were of animals and not humans, they would have been less likely to attend. The acts of looking at something we see as the "same" as us and something we regard as fundamentally "different" yield two distinct types of reactions.
48. One dramatic exception is a man with one arm raised, holding his entire skin, which dangles from his fist. This pose is a copy of a Renaissance anatomy illustration, also included in the exhibit.
49. I thank Kristine Stiles for raising the question of the fetus's skin.
50. For three considerations of the von Hagens's exhibits specifically in terms of the history of anatomy, anatomical knowledge, and the legal status of human remains, see Petra Kuppers, "Visions of Anatomy: Exhibitions and Dense Bodies," Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 15:3 (2004): 123-156
51. Marett Leiboff, "A Beautiful Corpse," Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 19:2 (2005): 221-237
52. Megan Stern, "Dystopian Anxieties versus Utopian Ideals: Medicine from Frankenstein to The Visible Human Project and Body Worlds," Science as Culture 15:1 (2006): 61-84.
53. Recently the first full-length edited book of essays on the von Hagens exhibits has appeared. See The Anatomy of Body Worlds: Critical Essays on the Plastinated Cadavers of Gunther von Hagens, edited by T. Christine Jespersen, Alicita Rodriguez, and Joseph Starr (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland Publishers, 2009). These essays examine the exhibit from a number of perspectives, including the legal, religious, and aesthetic. My concerns here are more specifically with the status of presence and social identity when von Hagens's anti-taxidermic technique (of display with skin removed) is e mployed.
54. In the United States, the exhibition has been hosted only by science museums, not art spaces, and this choice, given the respect and seriousness with which science is regarded, may have been part of the reason why the exhibition has drawn relatively little complaint in this country.
55. Comments taken verbatim from the audience comment book that was available on the days I visited the Chicago show in 2007. Although instructions suggested that people include their name, age, hometown, and occupation, relatively few supplied all this information.