Shannon Lecture: Animals on Display: Transforming Exhibition Traditions in Natural History and Science Museums

For the final Shannon Lecture for 2014 is next Friday at 1pm 303 Paterson Hall at Carleton University. The speaker is Karen Rader, director of the Science, Technology, and Society Program at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA.

John Berger, critic and writer, 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. At the same time, a plethora of new museum representational practices have arisen that 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. This talk will look at a range of examples of animals on display, situated in various historical and sociocultural contexts, in order to speak to the ongoing and
important role of museums in making animals visible.

Thanks to Bruce Elliott for the tip on this and all the Shannon lectures.