The American Museum of Natural History is famous for its dioramas that include expert examples of taxidermy. But taxidermy is encountered in other types of museums and facets of contemporary life, especially since it has been gaining popularity in art and elsewhere. This post explores (and celebrates) the expected and unexpected spaces where taxidermy is…
In addition to testing the stability of metal-complex dyes, we have been studying condition issues facing historic taxidermy collections (see our previous posts on the Mammalogy condition survey) and performing conservation treatments on selected specimens. These treatments stabilized important mounts and served as case studies for a workshop on the Care of Historic Mammalian Taxidermy…
Alongside the lightfastness testing described earlier in this blog, we are developing tools to support the efforts of other individuals and institutions seeking to preserve collections of historic mammalian taxidermy. To do this, we needed to deepen our understanding of the historic and modern materials and techniques used in creating these objects, the common condition…
Our blog posting took a short respite over the past few months, as we said a fond farewell and welcomed new members to our original Team Taxidermy. It was bittersweet to say goodbye and good luck to our pre-program intern Ersang Ma, who has been working with the team since summer 2014. Ersang was an…
On June 26th 2014, Project Conservator Julia Sybalsky and Graduate Intern Gisella Campanelli attended the Microfading and Light Management Study Day, a half-day workshop and demonstration organized by Paul Whitmore at Yale University’s Institute for Preservation of Cultural Heritage (IPCH), and sponsored by IPCH and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. After catching an early morning…
In Their True Colors 