A Gathering of Wonders Book

In A Gathering of Wonders, Joseph Wallace takes readers behind the scenes of the American Museum of Natural History to meet the remarkable men and women who built its collections and exhibits. For more than 125 years, the New York Museum has been delighting visitors with its spectacular exhibits of animals, plants, minerals and ethnographic objects. The Museum's scientists and collectors were an eclectic bunch and Wallace clearly enjoys telling their stories. There's Carl Akeley, "A brilliantly innovative sculptor and preparator, a man who knew what a wild creature should look like in a museum, and who revolutionised the field of taxidermy to bring his vision to life." Akeley dreamed of building a massive hall to showcase African animals--as well as "to remind us that such spectacular, irreplaceable animals exist and perhaps to inspire us to help prevent their destruction". And then there's Mary Cynthia Dickerson, the first Curator of the Department of Herpetology--"a shining example of a self-made naturalist, pursuing a career outside the lines of what society deemed normal for a woman at the dawn of the 20th century;" or Bashford Dean, "perhaps history's only lifelong student of both armour and fish", who served as Curator of the Department of Reptiles and Fishes--as well as Curator of Arms and Armour at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. These men and women faced many challenges in their work, such as charging rhinos in Africa, sandstorms in the Gobi desert, elusive insects, recreating a patch of rain forest with 411,000 replica leaves and the difficulties of classifying hundreds of thousands of those "tiny glories of biodiversity": insects. One of the most amazing stories concerns the museum's life-size model of a blue whale. When it became time to replace the 1907 model (which was simply too large to be moved to the new Hall of Ocean Life), the scientists were told they couldn't suspend it on wires from the ceiling, nor would they put the model on a pedestal with a support pole piercing its belly. Feeling frustrated, mammalogist Richard G Van Gelder suggested, tongue in cheek, that the museum feature a beached whale. When to his horror the suggestion was approved and plans moved forward, Van Gelder managed to find a way to scrap the concept. While speaking at of luncheon of the Women's Committee, Van Gelder told the fundraising group about the plan and described how the Museum hoped to try something revolutionary: "A gentle breeze will waft the odour of the sea toward the visitors ... and we are even going to try to simulate the odour of the decomposing whale, so that all can share in this wonderful experience in totality." Needless to say, the plan was scrapped and in the end the 90-foot-plus model was bolted directly to the ceiling. Amid all the stories Wallace also introduces a good deal of the scientific work done at the Museum but this serves to pique the interest rather than befuddle the general reader. Most of all, Gathering of Wonders creates an almost irresistible urge to book a trip to New York and the American Museum of Natural History as soon as possible to wander its halls. --Sunny DelaneyRead More