Comments on: "My Favorite Museum Exhibit": Arab Courier Attacked by Lions

By: StephenJJohnson

StephenJJohnson — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 14:32:00 +0000

My point, precisely.

By: Ito Kagehisa

Ito Kagehisa — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 20:27:00 +0000

Broca and Cope both wanted to be displayed in a museum after death; however both of them turned out to be insufficient to the requirements of the position.

This Arab has been elevated to the position of exemplar of humanity, and any racism you see came from the prejudice lodged firmly in your own eye.

By: JG

JG — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 20:08:00 +0000

Over the years of viewing
“Arab Courier Attacked by Lions”, my sympathies have evolved. First, as a kid, I feared for the courier, wondering if I could have gotten off a shot with that rusty musket. Later, I was concerned about the camel, its wounds so realistic you knew it would never survive. Finally, I came to appreciate, then morn the plight of the Barbary Lion, abused by everyone from Roman Gladiators to decrepit zoos and circuses. Fortunately, I’ll never need to worry about this fantastic exhibit of a deadly desert encounter, the Carnegie Museum has preserved it forever, in a ‘sand globe’

By: EvilSpirit

EvilSpirit — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 19:07:00 +0000

No, it’s sh0rt hand for “the only survivor of the Battle of Little Big Horn that we give a fuck about.” To imagine otherwise is pretty clueless.

By: Drew from Zhrodague

Drew from Zhrodague — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 17:29:00 +0000

Former/future Pittsburgher. This diorama is also one of the neat things at the Carnegie Museum. The aviary also has some vintage dioramas, and there are some impressive dinosaur bones. Some cities do not have these kinds of museums, and I feel lucky to have been all over this one.

By: StephenJJohnson

StephenJJohnson — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 17:13:00 +0000

So *no* native Americans were killed?

By: John

John — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 16:24:00 +0000

I might be mistaken but wouldn’t this diorama have been the Exhibition version of the Delacroix painting from 1850 – it would have been well known by that time
http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/Tag/lions#supersized-search-187710

By: Mia C

Mia C — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 14:50:00 +0000

I go to the Carnegie Museum at least once a year. I’ve been there dozens of times. How have I missed this? I feel very unobservant right now. Maybe I’m too captivated by the dinosaurs?

By: millie fink

millie fink — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 14:20:00 +0000

But people who work in museums almost never also work in theaters. The issue here is more a matter of institutional racism within the realms of “History” and “museums.”

By: Ipo

Ipo — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 13:04:00 +0000

I feel very strongly that gorillas are people.
Some have spoken with us, using a vocabulary of over 600 words/signs, in one of OUR languages.
And tought it their children.

It’s all a terrible mix-up. It’s corporations that are not people, damnit!

By: coryf

coryf — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 12:21:00 +0000

For decades, this horse was billed as “the only survivor of the Battle of the Little Big Horn.” Which, for obvious reasons, is both wildly inaccurate and pretty racist.

No, it’s just short hand for “the only survivor of the US Calvary side of the Battle of the Little Big Horn”, everybody knows that the Indians survived. It’s just assumed that any “survivors” must be from one side.

By: bryan rasmussen

bryan rasmussen — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 09:56:00 +0000

**Yes, there is something a little weird about snow falling on this scene.Screw the sandstorm idea. I want snow and it should play little drummer boy or jingle bells or some such when shaken. Then I could tell my kid it was one of the three wisemen getting mauled to death after seeing baby jesus.

By: Wreckrob8

Wreckrob8 — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 07:01:00 +0000

I think collections should be mixed up as much as possible – authenticity should be treated the same way as the Mediaeval world treated holy relics – the more the better. (I am aware that this was partly to relieve people of their cash.)

By: Jeff Kaplan

Jeff Kaplan — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 06:18:00 +0000

NO WAY! I was just at the Carnegie a month or two ago and was exclaiming that this was always my favorite thing. I remember as a boy, looking up at into the beady eyes of the camel and the man and being mesmerized.

By: retepslluerb

retepslluerb — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 05:19:00 +0000

Dont know about the 21st century in your part, but in our part we mount and display the remains of non-non-Europeans, yes.

By: StephenJJohnson

StephenJJohnson — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 04:05:00 +0000

Actually, Comanche – the horse at the KU Natural History Museum – was restored in 2005 http://naturalhistory.ku.edu/galleries/comanche-restoration-project and moved to a new enclosure on the fourth floor with new – and more culturally sensitive signage.

There’s a public event at the musum on February 2nd http://naturalhistory.ku.edu/calendar/2012/02/02/comanche150 to mark his almost 150 years.

By: cleek

cleek — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 02:32:00 +0000

the bodies of white people were also taxidermied, dismembered, dissected in theaters, and cut up for display! didya see the post that immediately follows this one?

By: snowmentality

snowmentality — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 02:26:00 +0000

“Historical racism” was not referring to the mannequin’s skin color. It was referring to the possibility that the rider might have been an actual taxidermied human being at one point, and that bodies of non-European people were actually taxidermied and displayed in other museums, as though they were animals. I’m gonna go ahead and say yeah, that’s racist.

By: snowmentality

snowmentality — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 02:21:00 +0000

Oh Jesus. I honestly did not know that human beings were stuffed and mounted as exhibits as described in that link about Verreaux. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but I’m still shocked.

Several years ago I visited the Harvard Museum of Natural History, which has a truly creepy amount of taxidermied animals of all kinds. One of the exhibits was a diorama of two taxidermied gorillas, male and female, which had been mounted standing fully upright. I was really disturbed by the idea of stuffed gorillas, and remember telling my boyfriend “That’s just way too close to killing and stuffing people.”

Now I find out that happened.

P.S. I went to see Bodies before I knew the source of the bodies. I thought they were voluntarily donated to science. I had it confused with Body Worlds, which really does use only bodies donated with proper informed consent. Then I found out Bodies used the bodies of Chinese prisoners, and didn’t even try to verify consent. I felt horrible for having given them my money, and angry because I felt like Bodies was dishonestly trading on Body Worlds’ ethical reputation.

By: gadgetgirl

gadgetgirl — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 01:59:00 +0000

I’ve seen racist uses of human bodies for museum exhibits, but I’m not sure this counts. Besides, I’ve also seen at least three examples of European corpses on display in museums: two soap people in the US (wasn’t one featured in Boing Boing a while ago?) and the skeleton of a 19th century man who was hanged for a crime he very likely didn’t commit — but the local medical researchers thought he had nice bone structure and especially even teeth. The skeleton was in a museum in Oxford UK.

By: millie fink

millie fink — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 01:54:00 +0000

Not sure if that’s snark or not, but in case it’s not–

Because stuffing non-white corpses while refusing to do so to white ones is racist. What museum that displayed actual, dead and stuffed (non-white) people as various sorts of ”savages” also displayed, say, actual dead and stuffed white people as Pilgrims?

By: Christopher Ing

Christopher Ing — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 01:38:00 +0000

I can’t give much context, but there’s a somewhat similar diorama at “Museum National d Histoire Naturelle” in Paris, that I snapped a pic of attached.

By: cleek

cleek — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 01:14:00 +0000

why would that be racist?

if you’re going to make a diorama of someone being attacked by lions, that someone should probably be from a place where lions actually live(d).

By: Hugh Johnson

Hugh Johnson — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 01:10:00 +0000

That exhibit was always a highlight of school field trips, only surpassed by the fossil of the giant trilobite, which in 5th grade, Duane puked all over. My kids both enjoy the Carnegie, and the “Guy getting eaten by lions” is one of the faves.

By: JamesMcDaniel

JamesMcDaniel — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 01:08:00 +0000

Indeed, we denizens of the 21st Century are much more enlightened than the “historical racists” of 1899. People of today would never exhibit preserved and mounted corpses of non-Europeans for the purpose of education, much less profit – right?

http://www.bodiestheexhibition.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodies:_The_Exhibition#Uncertainty_about_provenance_of_the_bodies

By: Lj Swiech

Lj Swiech — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 00:53:00 +0000

My grandmother lived a block away from the Carnegie Museum. Every Sunday that we would visit my brothers and me would bolt ASAP over there. It was free back then. That diorama was a favorite. At that time it was on the third floor which was dimly lit, like an attics, which only added to the neat factor of the poor Arab guy on his way to being lion chow. Museums are too polish and sanitized now a days. I still believe it was a real guy stuffed back then.

By: Frenchfarmer

Frenchfarmer — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 00:38:00 +0000

So they were uncivilised yet they had Camel Express way back then?

By: nankerphelge

nankerphelge — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 00:23:00 +0000

The museum’s website says:”Instead of traditional snowflakes, the globe, when shaken, produces a sand storm that surrounds the courier and animals.”

Still odd though.

By: jhoosier

jhoosier — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 00:09:00 +0000

I’d like one of those snowglobes, but the camel’s mouth weirds me out. Why does the inside of a mouth have to be painted brilliant red? The snow doesn’t bother me. They should’ve made it sand-colored, then it could be a sandstorm.

By: jkg

jkg — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 00:02:00 +0000

very cool! reminds of this photo I took of a rather odd exhibit at a museum in Tucson, AZ
http://www.flickr.com/photos/octalkhan/6587218177/lightbox/