STUFF TO READ:
History of Taxidermy & Natural History Museums:
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Stephen Asma's enjoyable history of natural history museums and their ordering principles. | Photographs and images of the Harvard Musem of Natural History's exceptional collection of natural artefacts. | Images and history behind the American Museum of Natural History's famous dioramas. |
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| Building great natural history museums takes more than great specimens. Carla Yanni examines the role of architecture in the establishment of Victorian catherdrals of nature. | Paula Findlen's classic work on the history of early modern collecting and cabinets of wonders. | A history of habitat Dioramas and illusions of wilderness in natural history Museums by Karen Wonders. Out of print, but worth tracking down. |
Cultural Interests:
Nanoq: Flat Out and Bluesome: a Cultural Life of Polar Bears: Bryndis Snaebjornsdottir and Mark Wilson's quest to find and photograph every stuffed polar bear in Great Britain. | Rosamund Purcell's photographs of rare, endangered, and extinct species preserved in natural history museums. | Although mainly concerning romantic era collecting, Judith Pascoe's book has an excellent chapter on stuffed hummingbirds in early nineteenth-century England. |
Animals & Animal Studies:
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Steve Baker explores animals and animal imagery in contemporary art, with a special emphasis on what he terms "botched taxidermy." | An anthology of essays on killing animals from the Animal Studies Group. Authors include Steve Baker, Erica Fudge, and Jonathan Burt. | David Quammen takes on maneaters (bears, sharks, crocodiles) with several excursions into taxidermy |
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A collecting of essays presenting a cross-cultural, cross-historical look at animals including a look at taxidermy by Jane Desmond. |