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.
Enlightenment: Discovering the World in the Eighteenth Century
Preface by Neil MacGregor, Director of the British Museum Part I: The 'Universal' Museum 1 'Aimed at universality and belonging to the nation': The Enlightenment and the British Museum 2 Collectors and commemoration: portrait sculpture and paintings in the British Museum 3 'Most curious, splendid and useful': the King's Library of George III 4 The King's Library and its architectural genesis 5 Ancient glory and modern learning: the sculpture-decorated library Part II: The Natural World 6 Challenging the dogma: classifying and describing the natural world 7 Natural history collectors and their collections: 'simpling macaronis' and instruments of empire 8 The nature of the earth and the fossil debate 9 Rocks, fossils and the emergence of palaeontology Part III: The Artificial World 10 The ordering of the artificial world: collecting, classification and progress 11 'The King loves medals': the study of coins in Europe and Britain 12 Engraved gems: the lost art of antiquity 13 Words and pictures: Greek vases and their classification 14 Between antiquarianism and experiment: Hans Sloane, George III and collecting science 15 King George III's topographical collection: a Georgian view of Britain and the world Part IV: Ancient Civilizations: New Interpretations 16 Ideas of antiquity: classical and other ancient civilizations in the age of Enlightenment 17 The discovery of British antiquity 18 From Persepolis to Babylon and Nineveh: the rediscovery of the ancient Near East 19 'The curse of Babel': the Enlightenment and the study of writing 20 Sacred history? The difficult subject of religion Part V: Voyages of Discovery 21 Venture to the exterior 22 Romancing the Americas: public expeditions and private research c. 1778-1827 23 Irresistible objects: collecting in the Pacific and Australia in the reign of George III 24 Trade and learning: the European 'discovery' of the East 25 Africa: in the shadow of the Enlightenment Notes, sources and further reading Chronology Index
CIVIC LABORATORIES
This paper examines the extent to which the perspectives of science studies and actor-network theory can be combined with those of post-Foucauldian governmentality theory to understand the processes through which cultural institutions fabricate distinctive entities and bring these to bear on the governance of the social. The argument is developed by considering the respects in which the procedures of museums and the distinctive forms of cultural objecthood these give rise to can be illuminated by comparing them to laboratories. This prepares the way for an examination of the ways in which such forms of objecthood have been mobilized in programmes of social and civic governance both within museums and outside them, paying due attention to the differences between their functioning in these regards in the context of liberal forms of government and more directive forms of role. These general arguments are then illustrated with reference to contemporary debates focused on the refashioning of museums as instruments of cultural diversity. The paper concludes by reviewing the respects in which the perspectives it develops suggest the need to question the analytical effects of the extended concept of culture that has underlain the development of cultural studies and contemporary sociological understandings of culture.