Nature’s Mirror: How Taxidermists Shaped America’s Natural History Museums and Saved Endangered Species
Robert M. Timm
Abstract
The science and art of taxidermy have a long, rich, and unappreciated history. Mary Anne Andrei’s recent Nature’s Mirror provides an extremely well-researched and written history of the field in North America, which developed primarily through Ward’s Natural Science Establishment of Rochester, New York. Andrei very nicely makes the case that Ward’s was the training grounds for generations of taxidermists, and several went on to become leaders in American institutions as well in the budding conservation movement. Andrei is a senior producer for Nebraska’s PBS and NPR stations. Her research primarily focuses on environmental issues, and in-depth history documentaries. This is an excellent book and those interested in the science and art of taxidermy will enjoy reading it as much as I did. Andrei traces the evolution of taxidermy in museums and the transition of several students of Henry August Ward into leaders in exhibit development in museums and zoos and the major conservation issues of the early 20th century. In this review, I tie together information from the book with some additional details that I hope will be of interest to the reader. In the 1860s, Henry Ward established at the University of Rochester what was among the largest museum collections in the United States. The story of Ward’s is the history of museum and zoo exhibits, activism in conservation, and is still being told today. In this book, we learn how these young men went from naïve student naturalists to leaders in developing exhibits and driving forces in conserving wildlife, at times in competition with each other.