Still Life Melissa Milgrom (notion reading list .txt) 📖

(in a nutshell, "Welcome to the Mammal Family Reunion. Come Meet Your Relatives!"). Mostly the hall would show the diversity of species and how mammals have adapted over time to a range of environments and climates, which, given global warming, is an incredibly important trait to highlight.

Now the museum had to decide how to convey this. The "concept people"—a group of highly accomplished scientists, designers, writers, and curators—investigated whether, for instance, the exhibit should be based on phylogenetics or ecosystems; whether dioramas or freestanding mounts enhanced with fog machines and simulated thunder should be used. Meanwhile, Matthews, a "production person," was dispatched to Newington to outfit the lab with the best tools and equipment.

Deciding to forgo traditional dioramas ("stagnant"; "animals in their dullest moments"), the concept people called for installations with more drama, more high-tech wizardry, and more interactive special effects, such as flip doors, pushbuttons, digitized animal sounds, and kids-only crawlspaces. This is what I believe associate director for public programs Robert Sullivan meant when he told reporters at a press conference that the new hall contained the "ooh factor" and the "gross-out factor."

Smithsonian taxidermist Paul Rhymer explained it like this: "Kids don't give a shit about those dioramas. It's the MTV generation. They want new images, and this exhibit gives it to them. I had to be converted to that point of view. This hall treats taxidermy like sculpture. The starkness shows off the work. Or maybe I'm buying the party line. That's okay. [It's] okay to be a company man on this one."

Once the concept people chose the environments (arctic, rain forest, temperate forest, and prairie) and their corresponding inhabitants—274 of the 5,000 known mammal species and 1 extinct one—it had to acquire the specimens. Historically, as we have seen, museums have obtained specimens by shooting them in the wild. That clearly was not going to happen here. Instead, the museum took specimens off of its own exhibits and excavated others from its dusty attic. It circulated a wish list to far-flung labs and zoos, requesting 450 additional skins and carcasses. And it acquired two amazing private collections of 250 specimens each: one from Roger Martin, a taxidermist from North Carolina, the other from Kenneth Behring.

At seventy-four, Behring was a real estate magnate and the former owner of the Seattle Seahawks football team. He also was an internationally famous big-game hunter with more than 300 kills recorded in the official record book of the Safari Club International (the world's largest hunting lobby, which, incidentally, has its own taxidermy museum in Tucson, Arizona). Behring was not someone Walker would ever call a bunny hunter. Neither would the Humane Society or scores of other environmental organizations. When the Humane Society, for instance, got wind of Behring's donation, it posted a statement on its Web site describing the time Behring shot one of the last remaining argali sheep in existence (Kazakhstan, 1997). Instead of censuring Behring for killing an endangered species on the brink of extinction (only about one hundred existed in the wild), the Smithsonian, having just accepted the $20 million, attempted to import its trophy remains as a scientific specimen. Eventually, after much bad press and public outcry, the museum dropped the permit application.

Because of all this, some museum people and a host of environmental groups suggested that it was unethical to accept money and trophies from someone—even a great philanthropist such as Behring—who had been seemingly indiscriminate in his choice of kills (Behring says he shot the sheep in the company of Russian scientists who wanted to study it) and that the museum was allowing him to buy his way into the exhibit. Collections manager Linda K. Gordon, the person at the Smithsonian who personally accessioned each of Behring's trophies, denied this. "Of course he was interested in seeing those specimens used [in the exhibit], but there was no stipulation of that or content," she explained to me one day by phone.

She went on, "We were all concerned that the big-game aspect of this would make a big flap in the press, and that never happened. We were always waiting for the other shoe to fall, and [the] public programs [department] was careful to emphasize that no specimens were killed for the exhibit—and that is true—more or less—almost true."

At that moment, it occurred to me that when all was said and done, the most controversial aspect of the new mammal hall was, ironically, its most traditional feature: it had been funded by a big-game hunter.

The morning I visited the lab, Matthews sat at a worktable, preserving an exceptionally rare and wonderful creature: the okapi (Okapia johnstoni). Okapis are shy ruminants that live in the eastern Congo. They are equally strange and beautiful. They have a zebra's striped hind legs, an antelope's body, and a giraffe's face and long tongue. So unusual are they, in fact, that when Sir Harry Johnston brought the first okapi skin to England at the turn of the twentieth century, the Zoological Society of London thought it was a horse and classified it as Equus johnstoni. The society later articulated an actual okapi skeleton, realized it was not a horse, and reclassified it. Here in the lab, the okapi may look like a taxidermist's fanciful creation (like the jackalope), but in the forests of the eastern Congo, its shadowy brown coat camouflages it in the trees, which is how the species has survived (so far). Although scientists discovered okapis only a hundred years ago, they are already headed for extinction. Matthews treated his okapi skin like a precious jewel.

This okapi didn't come from the Congo; it died at a California zoo. That was evident by its overgrown hooves, which would have been filed down in the wild. Captivity alters the way animals look; captive animals are rarely as beautiful as those in the wild, which is why taxidermists find them aesthetically subpar.

"It's like masturbation versus sex," Walker explained (after he was back in Alberta and could say whatever he wanted).

"We never