After the readings we had done, and the discussions in class... I couldn't stop thinking about the major difference between the 'art' in the AMNH and the art in other museums... It had all at one point been alive, and was killed deliberately for the art (scientific reasons as well, in some cases).
Thursday was my first time ever visiting the museum. Maybe if I had visited when I was a kid, or at a different time in my life when I'm not so bombarded by existential ideas (university...) I would be able to perceive the museum in a different way, but my perspective has been pretty narrow recently and all I could think about was the fact that I was looking at dead animals...
It's funny how they place them in these scenes to replicate their natural state... I think this trying to make them look lively just makes them look more lifeless, and less less real to me.
Because all of this was on my mind, when I was looking at the displays, I couldn't help but notice the representation of death. In the South Georgia penguins display there is a king penguin feeding on a dead penguin chick. In the key, all of the penguins drawings were in bold, even the ones not corresponding to s unique #, but the one being fed upon was just an outline. It was considered part of the background... because it was dead. Maybe this was just a thoughtless or aesthetic choice, but I found it to be very interesting, and telling in the way that the museum doesn't really want to confront or discuss death.
-Vanessa Rose
(sorry this is a little late.....)
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