Animals on Display

John Berger famously said that "in the last two centuries, animals have gradually disappeared." Those who share his view contend that animals have been removed from our daily lives and that we have been removed from the daily lives of animals. This has been the impetus for a plethora of representational practices that, broadly conceived, work to fill in the gap between humans and animals. Ironically, many of these may ultimately intensify the very nostalgia, distance, and ignorance they were devised to remedy.

Animals on Display presents nine lively and engaging essays on the historical representation and display of nonhuman animals. Looking at a wide range of examples, many of them now little known, the essays situate them in their historical and sociocultural contexts, while speaking to the ongoing importance of making animals visible for the arrangement and sustenance of human-animal relations. Aside from the editors, the contributors are Brita Brenna, Guro Flinterud, Henry A. McGhie, Brian W. Ogilvie, Nigel Rothfels, and Lise Camilla Ruud.

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Making Animals Visible
Adam Dodd, Karen A. Rader, and Liv Emma Thorsen

Part I Preserving
1 Six Monstrous Pigs: Animal Monsters and Museum Practices in the Eighteenth-Century El Real Gabinete de Historia Natural
Lise Camilla Ruud

2 The Frames of Specimens: Glass Cases in Bergen Museum Around 1900
Brita Brenna

3 Preserving History: Collecting and Displaying in Carl Akeley’s In Brightest Africa
Nigel Rothfels

Part II Authenticating
4 The Pleasure of Describing: Art and Science in August Johann Rösel von Rosenhof’s Monthly Insect Entertainment    
Brian W. Ogilvie

5 Images, Ideas, and Ideals: Thinking with and about Ross’s Gull
Henry A. McGhie

6 A Dog of Myth and Matter: Barry the Saint Bernard in Bern
Liv Emma Thorsen

Part III Interacting
7 Popular Entomology and Anthropomorphism in the Nineteenth Century: L. M. Budgen’s Episodes of Insect Life
Adam Dodd

8 Interacting with The Watchful Grasshopper; or, Why Live Animals Matter in Twentieth-Century Science Museums
Karen A. Rader

9 Polar Bear Knut and His Blog
Guro Flinterud

About the Contributors
Index