CAG on museums: Taxidermy at the Hancock Museum

Taxidermy collections have always been a little creepy in my opinion and although I understand their rationale for existence in museums, I’m not a big fan. Taxidermy, as the art of preparing and mounting animals for display, has long been a part of a museum history of learning. I can understand their existence from an 18^th or 19^th century perspective where one might not have ever been able to encounter these animals in far away locations, and that today taxidermied animals are useful as study tools, again for those who would not be able to see these animals in real life.

Red panda

When I went to work at the Great North Museum: Hancock, I was first struck by the fact that the entire entrance is a greeting of multi-tiered mounted animals from around the world.

I was then later taken to the stores only to see that there were thousands of natural history specimens such as trophy heads and 200 years of taxidermy. Some of the collections of taxidermied animals are from the original collections of the Natural History Society of Northumbria, which were created by John Hancock (after whom the museum was originally named). Hancock was considered the father of modern taxidermy, and his collections are considered an important part of the history of the Great North Museum: Hancock (as it was renamed after 2009).

Bird in its 'habitat'

Some animals that people had never seen were very popular attractions in the museum, such as the dodo bird. In the stores, there is an example of a mounted 19^th century animal in comparison to its 20^th century counterpart, which displays that modern thinking about the birds changed, and biologists thought them to be more slim and streamlined in later years.

19thC dodo on right, 20thC dodo on left

In my brief explorations of the taxidermy stores, I’ve come across some really ‘interesting’ examples of taxidermy/ taxidermy gone wrong!

Creepy fawn

Shocked lioness

But nothing has been as interesting as the rogue taxidermy (the construction of mythical or hybrid animals) creation of the merman at the Horniman Museum. This is still one of my favorite museum objects to date! http://www.horniman.ac.uk/collections/unmasking-the-mysterious-merman

Merman!