By Nancy Moses
Few past the insider discover that museums personal thousands of gadgets the general public by no means sees. In Lost within the Museum, Nancy Moses takes the reader at the back of the “employees merely” doorways to discover the tales buried―along with the objects―in the crypts of museums, historic societies, and files. Moses discovers the particular birds shot, crammed, and painted by means of John James Audubon, America's such a lot loved chook artist; a spear that abolitionist John Brown carried in his quixotic quest to unfastened the slaves; and the cranium of a prehistoric Peruvian baby who died with scurvy. She takes the reader to Ker-Feal, the key farmhouse that Albert Barnes of the Barnes origin full of terrific American antiques and that used to be then left untouched for greater than fifty years.
Weaving the tales of the item, its unique proprietor, and the customarily idiosyncratic establishment the place the item is living, the ebook finds the darkest mystery of the cultural international: the precarious stability of artwork, tradition, and politics that continue goods, for many years, misplaced within the museum.
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Additional info for Lost in the Museum: Buried Treasures and the Stories They Tell
Sample text
When pickled and placed in jars, they quickly lost their shape and color. How to capture their feathery gills and luminous hues and present them for public view? Leopold put his talent to the task. He began by studying scientific illustrations of marine invertebrates, spending hours trying to replicate them in glass.
I was surprised to learn that the current director of exhibits at the Academy of Natural Sciences had worked at the American Museum of Natural History and been the wall’s creator. That trip revealed the exciting possibilities inherent in dioramas and other natural history exhibits. I realized that the Academy of Natural Sciences had all the ingredients for the Audubon exhibit of my dreams: a large cache of his possessions, a talented exhibition designer, a leading Audubon scholar, and a group of curators who knew their birds and bones.
Audubon decided that his birds needed to be shown as big as life, engraved and hand-tinted on the largest and most expensive paper available: double elephant size, 27½ X 39½ inches. Audubon’s plan was to secure subscribers for the entire book, to publish its pictures in sets of five, and to collect funds upon delivery of each set. Only the wealthiest individuals and institutions could afford the enormous cost of Birds of America, so Audubon set out to sell the subscriptions himself—one by one. Thus began Audubon’s second extended career, as a salesman.