Elephants Are Not Picked from Trees

Liv Emma Thorsen

Description

"Elephants are not picked from trees" are the words of Swedish taxidermist and conservator David Sjolander, spoken while he was in Angola looking for a fine bull elephant specimen in the autumn of 1948. At the age of 62 Sjolander was to satisfy his life's dream of shooting the elephant he for so long had wished to prepare and exhibit. The African elephant was to be the main attraction in the Mammal Room of the Gothenburg Museum of Natural History. Liv Emma Thorsen, professor of cultural history, has reconstructed the collection history of four mammals exhibited in the Gothenburg Museum of Natural History that attracted much attention when they were displayed to the public for the first time: The elephant, gorilla, Tonkean macaque and walrus. The book examines how the museum acquired animals for its exhibits from 1906 to 1948, and how living animal bodies became museum exhibits. Using photographs and documents from the Gothenburg Museum of Natural History, the book shows that these museums are in possession of valuable material for writing the cultural history of animals, and that the museums of natural history display a nature that is historically, socially and culturally construed.

Sujets

• Sciences de la nature
• Biologie
• Natural History
• Sciences et techniques
• Science

Informations

• Publié par: Aarhus University Press
• Date de parution: 29 août 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9788771840827
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 33 Mo

Extrait

ELEPHANTS
ARE NOT PICKED
FROM TREESELEPHANTS
ARE NOT PICKED
FROM TREES
Animal Biographies
in Gothenburg
Natural History Museum
Liv Emma Thorsen
Aarhus University Press | a Elephants Are Not Picked From Trees
© The author and Aarhus University Press 2014
Layout and cover: Jørgen Sparre
Cover illustrations:
The African elephant and the walrus tusks
in Gothenburg Natural History Museum
Cover photographs: Anders Larsson, GNM
E-book production by Narayana Press, Denmark
isbn 978 87 7184 082 7
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Published with the support of
The Research Council of Norway
Weblinks were active when the book was printed.
They may no longer be active.Content
Aknowledgements | 7
Introduction A Museum and its Animals | 9
Chapter 1 Commercialized : The Gorilla from Rowland Ward | 412 Captured : Monjet the Monkey | 93
Chapter 3 Stranded : The Walrus from Rörön | 1474 Collected : The African Elephant | 189
Conclusion Animals, Society, and History | 235
References | 245
Index | 251Aknowledgements
y sincere thanks go frst to Göteborgs Naturhistoriska
Museum, where I have been received with generosity,
goodwill, support and a hearty “Welcome home!” when-Mever I have returned for another study visit. I would in
particular like to thank Birgitta Hansson. Without her thorough and
deep knowledge of the museum archive this book could not have been
written. Friederike Johansson has helped me to solve the puzzle of the
elephant tusks, and she has stimulated my interest in skeleton material.
Thanks also to Åsa Holmberg for letting me have unrestricted access
to the large museum collection of photos, and for always letting me
have excellent offce space when working in the museum. All credit
for the new photographs in the book goes to Anders Larsson. Christel
Johnsson, Monica Silfverstolpe, and Thomas Gütebier have taught me
about taxidermy. In the fnal stages of the book Per Lekholm and Eva
Andreasson have been helpful beyond words.
I would also like to extend my thanks to Världskulturmuseet for
their assistance, as well as to Sjöfartsmuseet Akvariet, and Trädgårds -
föreningen for their help in fnding material about apes in Gothenburg.
This book is a result of the project “Animals as Things and
Animals as Signs”, funded by The Research Council of Norway and
hosted by the Department of Culture Studies and oriental Languages,
A KN o WLEDGEMENTS 7
University of oslo, 2008–2012. Thank you to Brita Brenna, Adam Dodd,
Guro Flinterud, Henry McGhie, Karen Rader, Brian ogilvie, and
Nigel Rothfels for constructive input and comments. Adam Dodd and
John Anthony have kindly helped me with linguistic issues. The road
to publication has been long, but never boring!
E LEPHANTS ARE N o T PICKED FR o M TREES8A Museum and its Animals
his is a book about stuffed animals, not about taxidermy per
se, but rather about the biographies and collection histories
of four mammals on display in the Gothenburg Natural His -T tory Museum: a gorilla, a Tonkean macaque, a walrus, and an
1African elephant. These animals have been selected because they ex -
emplify four different routes animal bodies have followed into the -mu
seum’s collections. The gorilla was purchased from Rowland Ward in
London, a frm that produced and sold mounted animals to museums
and private buyers. The Tonkean macaque had been the museum’s
mascot during the interwar years, and was known by museum visitors
as Monjet the monkey. The walrus, which lost its way and ended up in
the small islands and skerries off the coast of Gothenburg, shows that
animals may end up as natural history specimens, because they have
been the victims of accidents. The African elephant was killed to satisfy
a taxidermist’s dream of once being allowed to stuff and mount the
largest land mammal on earth.
The overriding question in this context is to ask which connec -
tions are broken and which are established when an animal is included
in a natural history collection. Where did the animal come from? How
and by whom was it moved from its habitat to the museum? How is an
individual animal transformed into a museum artefact and a scientifc
A M USEUM AND ITS A NIMALS 9
C o NTENT N o TES REFERENCES INDEX

THIS P A GE IS PR o TECTED BY C o PYRIGHT AND MA Y N o T BE REDISTRIBUTEDobject? What may the collecting history of an animal reveal about the
importance of animals in history and society? Donna Haraway has
stated that behind any representation of an animal, whether it is a stuffed
animal, a sculpture or a photograph, there is a multiplicity of objects
and encounters between humans and animals. These objects and en -
counters are the sources for writing new biographies, where the ind - i
vidual animal is placed in historical and cultural frameworks (Haraway
21989: 27). A similar understanding of the interpretation potential of
material objects can be found in Lorraine Daston’s Things That Talk.
Object Lessons from Art and Sciences, where she claims that certain
objects may “helpfully epitomize and concentrate relationships that
cohere without being logical in the strict sense” (Daston 2004: 20). The
biographies of the four selected animals raise questions as to whose
answers are essential to our understanding of the ways in which a loca -
tion and a building are transformed into a specifc “beastly place”, into
3a natural history museum.
Various groups in and outside Sweden have been involved in
the establishment of the Gothenburg Natural History Museum’s natu -
ral history collections: Museum employees, private persons, hunters,
explorers, traders, and sailors. Writing the biography of a natural history
specimen means that one has to recontextualize the process histori -
cally, socially, and culturally, both within the scope of the “afterlives”
of the animals in the museum, and within the limitations inherent in
4the source situation, in order to give the animals a life before death.
The biographies are based almost exclusively on sources found in the
Gothenburg Natural History Museum: the labels in the exhibition,
E LEPHANTS ARE N o T PICKED FR o M TREES10
C o NTENT N o TES REFERENCES INDEX

THIS P A GE IS PR o TECTED BY C o PYRIGHT AND MA Y N o T BE REDISTRIBUTEDthe collection registers, the museum photo archive, the museum cor -
respondence archive, board minutes, work records, invoices, annual
reports, anniversary papers, newspaper articles – and the animal spec -i
men itself. Thus the book also exemplifes how the archives in a natural
history museum may contribute to writing cultural history.
Working with one animal has revealed connections to other
animals which have hence been drawn into the text. This applies to
the baby elephant, and the hide collection which came to light
during the analysis of the African elephant, and it applies to the monkeys
displayed together with the Tonkean macaque and the gorilla. During
the feldwork in the museum I have regularly put my writing aside and
walked over to inspect the display of the animal behind the glass yet
again. Alternating between writing and seeing, moving between text
and material objects, has led me to new questions that have helped
me manoeuvre the animals out of their glass cabinets and the museum
building. Methodologically, this may be described as shifting the an - i
mals back in time, to other locations in the exhibition rooms, to the
taxidermy workshop and the store rooms, and from the red brick build -
ing in Slottsskogen back to their places of origin.
A Brief Presentation of Gothenburg
Natural History Museum
Gothenburg Natural History Museum is the second largest natural his -
tory museum in Sweden, which today houses a collection of around 10
million animals, with 100,000 of these being fragments of vertebrates.
A M USEUM AND ITS A NIMALS 11
C o NTENT N o TES REFERENCES INDEX

THIS P A GE IS PR o TECTED BY C o PYRIGHT AND MA Y N o T BE REDISTRIBUTEDThe history of the museum dates back to 31 october, 1833, when
“Kungliga Vetenskaps- och Vitterhetssamhället”, the Royal Society of Arts
and Sciences in Gothenburg, met and decided to establish a museum
to house the natural objects that had been collected in the county of
5Gothenburg. An underlying wish behind the decision was to
systematize and expand the collections (Fåhræus 1983: 15–16). From 1848,
the natural history collections were initially displayed systematically
in four rooms in the building formerly occupied by the Swedish East
India Company (1731–1813). In addition to the zoological specimens,
mineralogy and ethnographic objects were included (Hedqvist 2009:
67). Inspired by English museums, the natural history museum was
expanded with collections from archaeology, art, and handicrafts, and
on 20 December, 1861, Göteborgs Museum, the Gothenburg Museum,
opened (Fåhræus 1983: 20– 21).
The new museum used all of “ostindiska Huset”, the East India
House, erected in the city centre in 1762. The natural history museum
now became part of the Gothenburg Museum, and the exhibitions were
placed on the upper foor of the west wing of the building (Hedqvist
2009: 68). The zoological specimens were on display in a room with
a gallery and skylights (Hedqvist 2009: 69). The specimens were
displayed in cabinets attached to the foor, ceiling, and walls, “which has
sealed them, ensuring that in this museum one will not encounter the
unpleasant odours otherwise endemic to and developed by such col -
6lections” (Carlén 1869: 78). on the inside the cabinets were painted
a light blue-green, a colour rarely found in nature, which would thus
highlight the animals on display. The exterio