Interpreting nature: shifts in the presentation and display of taxidermy in contemporary museums in Northern England
Taxidermy is an organised craft which synthesises preserved animal skins with man-made materials to recreate a resemblance of living animals. As products of a cultural practice, displayed and interpreted in museums for the public, taxidermied animals are material manifestations of contingent value judgements. Despite the now widely held view in museum studies that the meanings of museum objects are constructed through their interpretation and reception, and therefore can have a multiplicity of meanings, many museums today continue to present and interpret taxidermied animals as objective species representatives. Although scientific themes continue to be privileged by many museums which maintain natural science as a discrete discipline, various social, ethical and political themes relating to the environment and to relationships between people have become more pronounced in recently redeveloped museums. Using Leeds City Museum, the Great North Museum: Hancock, and Museums Sheffield: Weston Park as case studies, this thesis investigates these changes to trace wider cultural shifts in politics, ethics, education and science. By analysing the frameworks within which museums and their staff operate, this investigation is concerned with the relationship between discourse and social practice in the form of museum exhibitions as a means of creating knowledge. It highlights how the public understanding of the natural world is more mutable than some of the enduring traditions of science may suggest, and how the discourses on science, and the objects through which they are articulated, are subject to cultural shifts which put their meanings in flux. 
This study is both part of, and a response to, an expanding field in museum studies and material culture studies which re-frames taxidermy objects as culturally contingent and therefore reflective of the subject positions of their makers, and the broader contexts of their making. In collating and investigating a diverse collection of archival material, this study recovers some of taxidermy’s histories, and contributes to the historical discourse on the display and interpretation of museum collections.
Living Specimens in England’s Natural History Museums: Frequency, Use and Legislation
Living displays feature prominently in many of England’s natural history museums, but what do they add to exhibits? We first take a closer look at the current living displays of three prominent museums: the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, Liverpool World Museum and Horniman Museum, then report the results of a questionnaire taking a more systematic look at the frequency and nature of current live animal displays in our natural history museums as well as curators’ perceptions of the benefits (or disadvantages) of their inclusion. Results suggest a variety of attitudes towards living displays and learning outcomes a focus of justifications. Curators also note a number of practical challenges to maintaining living collections and interesting issues are raised with regards to legislation governing living animal collections within museums. Introduction To commemorate the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s publication of On the Origin of Species, the Natural History Museum in London held a special exhibition titled ‘Darwin: Big Idea, Big Exhibition’. The exhibit was filled with artefacts and mementos of Darwin’s life and expeditions, including Darwin’s own specimens and notebooks, as well as modern perspectives on the significance of evolutionary theory. Nestled among these specimens and anecdotes of Darwin’s journeys were two living specimens, housed in large glass terrariums that were not unlike the glass cabinets containing other mementos and artefacts from the voyage. The two animals were ‘Charlie’, a green iguana, Iguana iguana (Linnaeus, 1758) and an unnamed Argentine horned frog, Ceratophrys ornata (Bell, 1843). Both are species that are extremely common in the pet trade, and which hold rather tenuous links to Darwin himself. While the non-living specimens on display and journal pages were items that passed through the very hands of Darwin, neither living animal was descended from an animal that had interacted with the celebrated naturalist. Yet both of these living displays occupied central positions within the exhibit and featured prominently in the press release advertising the exhibit (NHM, 2008a), with ‘Charlie’ even appearing as the very first image in a slideshow on the official website of the exhibition (NHM, 2008b). As I perused the exhibition, I wondered what incorporating these living displays added to the exhibition. But where I had my doubts, others celebrated the presence of real, live animals: “What an exhibition can do that is not done better in any other medium is to show real things. The closest this one come to giving an idea of what it was like to be Darwin the field naturalist is to be found in two glass cases: one is inhabited by a rarther sinister grey spotted pudding of a horned frog the other by a most green iguana. A small sample, but seeing these live animals makes you realize that no image on screen or on paper can match them.” (Campbell, 2009, my emphasis) Campbell’s comments suggest that encountering these live animals heightened the visitor’s experience, delivering a level of realism that cannot be accomplished by their non-living counterparts. For me, the presence of these living displays in the exhibit raised a number of interesting questions about their lives in glass cases. Did other visitors react to these living creatures in the same way Campbell had? How can and should live animal displays be used to enhance and compliment a museum’s non-living exhibits? While natural history museums are typically collections of non-living plants and animals, we have another word for collections of live animals, zoos. This then begs the question, how does including living animals blur the distinction between zoo and museum? What might their inclusion achieve?
Negotiating the cultural and economic outcomes of sport heritage attractions: the case of the National Baseball Hall of Fame
ABSTRACT Contemporary museums must balance their roles as commercial entities and repositories of various, and often dissonant, heritages and histories. Sports museums in particular often have clear commercial and nostalgic aims, particularly through tourist visitation, though the extent to which they represent more challenging narratives remains unclear. This paper examines how one of the most famous sports museums in the world, the National Baseball Hall of Fame (NBHF) in Cooperstown, New York, balances its dual role as tourist attraction and repository of baseball's sometimes checkered past. It was found that different sections of the museum provide greater or lesser degrees of engagement with more controversial issues, although the commercial outputs and appeal of the museum remains clear throughout. Utlimately, the NBHF demonstrates that balancing veneration and critique in collections can be commercially prosperous, and can provide a template for other sport and popular culture museums who may be wary of incorporating more challenging narratives in their exhibits. Furthermore, the symbiotic relationship between the Hall of Fame and the village of Cooperstown, particularly in creating and maintaining cultural and economic outputs, requires further exploration.