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.
Why look at taxidermy animals? Exhibiting, curating and mourning the Sixth Mass Extinction Event
ABSTRACT What role do museums play in elevating the Sixth Mass Extinction Event within public consciousness? How is an increasing awareness of human-made extinctions and global biodiversity loss transforming the representational techniques employed by natural history curators? And what are the prevailing ideologies and emotional registers of contemporary exhibitions about anthropogenic extinctions? This essay answers these questions by analysing how recent natural history exhibitions communicate the Sixth Extinction through the affects of grief, loss and sadness. By unfolding a tripartite analysis, one which brings together natural history curatorial practices, theoretical critique from critical heritage studies and environmental humanities, and anti-institutional activism from groups such as Extinction Rebellion, I make the argument that while these exhibitions have the potential to develop posthumanist practices of curation that disrupt the dominant anthroponormativity of natural history, there remain unresolved questions surrounding their representational reliance on mourning.
Nationalising nature: Wattle days in Australia
No politician or media commentator speaking about the recent bombings in Bali is without a sprig of wattle on their lapel. What is the wattle doing there? Is it only symbolising mourning? Or does is have other layers of meaning? Is the history of 'wattle as nation 'so complex that it might have a power to reinforce military sabre-rattling? Wattle is a symbol of nation — but what is a nation without a war, without 'blood on the wattle '?