In March, 2024, I visited the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. The museum is a modern example of the human impulse to collect things and put them on display for others, a practice that exploded during the age of exploration. More recently, that impulse found expression in the 19th century’s “cabinets of curiosities.” I myself have adopted a similar practice (see my past exhibit “Cabinet of Curiosities After Dark” on this website’s Archives page).
Strolling through the Museum’s Hall of Mammals, my experience is not unlike going to the zoo, that is, viewing animals exhibited behind glass walls. The main difference is that zoo animals are nominally alive and can move within their artificial enclosures (if only spasmodically in response to their sensory deprivation). In both settings, divorcing animals from the ecosystems in which they co-evolved deprives their existence of meaning. Displaying dead animals at the museum is at least more congruent with that broken connection.
Click on the first image below to start the slideshow.
