Cabinets of wonders
Cabinets of wondersWE THE CURIOUS vol.2 no.4
"I don't know how many times I've wandered around the halls of the AmericanMuseum of Natural History, among the armored fish and the stegosaurs," writesCarl Zimmer. "But it wasn't until I was a 26-year-old science writer that I had achance to pass through to the other side.""I waited by the Great Canoe, and eventually a gangly paleontologist emergedfrom the acoustic fog of school groups on field trips. He led me through exhibithalls, and then, between two dioramas, he stopped.""At first I thought he was lost in thought, and then maybe that he had forgottensomething. There was no reason, after all, to stop by a dim wall between a pair of displays. But then I heard keys ringing in Kellner's hand. He slipped one into aninvisible lock, and the wall swung open. We slid through and Kellner locked thedoor behind us. I was in the other museum.""'You've never been back here?' Kellner asked. The answer was obvious; I wasstaring like a gob-smacked tourist at the rows of storage cabinets, which loomedoverhead like wardrobes for giants."This is the hidden side of natural history museums; it is not a few storage rooms,but another world. "A natural history museum is really two museums," Zimmerconcludes, "and when you're in one of them, you can hardly imagine the other."Paleontologist Richard Fortey of the Natural History Museum in London gives thisdescription of the contrast: "When indolent holiday crowds saunter through thegalleries past mounted skeletons of extinct animals, or scan simulacra of dinosaurs
jerkily attempting to persuade the viewer that a hundred million years can bewished away with latex and mechanical bones, perhaps one in a dozen of thevisitors might notice a door in the wall behind the monsters. A well-polishedmahogany entrance, it can only be opened with a special key. Once in a while, acurator will emerge from the door and pause for a second, as if slightlyoverwhelmed by the sight of the throng. This is the door which leads away fromthe show of exhibition and into another world: the reality of collections of bonesand shells."In this world, a handful of highly specialized PhDs go about their work, carefullyand without fanfare. It is their life work to study -- and sometimes to add to -- thecollections at the museum, but, even in the face of such diligence, the vast majorityof physical objects lie undisturbed, awaiting a new angle of investigation. That iswhy everything is kept: the pickled fish and the stuffed lizards, hunting trophiesfrom the 19th century, dinosaur bones rapped in yellowed newspapers that give theprice of butter. All is kept -- and so keeps accumulating."I knew that natural history museums kept fossils and other objects in storage,"explains science writer Zimmer, "but I assumed that most of their material was ondisplay, back in the other world. As we walked down long hallways, with drawerafter drawer pressing in on either side, I realized how wrong I was. We could look into rooms as we passed, most of them with cabinets and drawers of their own.Kellner reached out to a hallway drawer and opened it. A hip bone from a dinosaursat inside, knobbed and flared like a Calder sculpture.""Scientists love to show off their collections by pulling drawers open at random,the way Kellner did -- exposing me to an army of flies from Peru neatly pinned toslips of paper, or a flock of lyrebirds lying on their backs as if dozing in a
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Cabinets of wonders | WE THE CURIOUS vol.2 no.4
A natural history museum is really two museums and when you're in one of them, you can hardly imagine the other.
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