Today, millions of zoological specimens acquired during the nineteenth-century collecting boom languish in natural history museums throughout the world. Many are in an advanced state of decay and represent extinct or at-risk specimens, with their value as measures of climate and habitat change atrophying. Decolonisation adds a further urgency to understanding their story. These specimens thus lack the provenance data to give them greater meaning and significance – where and by whom were they collected, traded, and transported – how did they end up in the museums’ collections? In the symposium an interdisciplinary team of scholars from history, science, anthropology, literary studies, and museum studies – describe their unified work in seeking to recover vital information and retell the stories and global trade of these specimens.
Venue: History department, Robinson Hall, Harvard University.
For more information about the event please contact sville@fas.harvard.edu
Simon Ville