Asma Stephen T. Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads: The Culture and Evolution of Natural History Museums

Oxford University Press, 2003. — 320 p.The natural history museum is a place where the line between "high" and "low" culture effectively vanishes - where our awe of nature, our taste for the bizarre, and our thirst for knowledge all blend happily together. But as Stephen Asma shows in Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads, there is more going on in these great institutions than just smart fun.Asma takes us on a wide-ranging tour of natural history museums in New York and Chicago, London and Paris, interviewing curators, scientists, and exhibit designers, and providing a wealth of fascinating observations. We learn how the first museums were little more than high-toned side shows, with such garish exhibits as the pickled head of Peter the Great's lover. In contrast, today's museums are hot-beds of serious science, funding major research in such fields as anthropology and archaeology.Stephen T. Asma is Professor of Philosophy and Interdisciplinary Humanities and Founding Fellow of the Research Group in Mind, Science, and Culture at Columbia College, Chicago. He has written articles on a broad range of topics that bridge the humanities and sciences, including pieces in Chronicle of Higher Education and The Humanist, and he is a regular contributor to Skeptic Magazine. The author of On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears and the bestselling Buddha for Beginners.