Still Life

by Melissa Milgrom

  Mead was bewildered. Never in his thirty years as a museum man had he encountered such a ridiculous scenario: a gargantuan fiberglass whale on eBay. It might have been funny if the whale weren't such a treasured specimen. Mead wanted to keep the whale—at least its tail, head, fins, and flippers—for future exhibitions. Because it hadn't been deaccessioned, the salvage contract could have been nullified. "But everyone at the museum would have had to have agreed, and there wasn't an agreement," he explained, somewhat woefully. Meanwhile, the contractor, who had to take the whale off eBay because it was too big to remove from the building, heard about the dispute. He then filed suit for and was eventually awarded possession of "the object" (the whale). "It was his, and he was going to take it out. And we didn't get the tail, and we didn't get the flippers, and we didn't get the head. And I think the head, the tail, and the flippers ended up in a dumpster," Mead said.

  "If the blue whale at the AMNH were torn down, the whole city [of New York] would protest," I said wishfully, remembering how the AMNH had given its whale a new navel when it renovated the Hall of Ocean Life.

  "We loaned them our forms," Mead said. "That blue whale is a virtual duplicate of ours. The American Museum's is ninety-four feet—they stretched it, because they could then claim they had the longest model."

  "Now they have the only one," I ventured.

  "No. The National Science Museum in Tokyo has a life-size blue whale, and they are the only two in existence."

  On Wednesday, November 15, 2003, the Kenneth E. Behring Family Hall of Mammals opened. People in tuxedos and evening gowns sipped cocktails in the museum's grand rotunda as acrobats rappelled down the gleaming marble walls—a dreamy ballet reminiscent of Cirque du Soleil. It felt historic to be present for the opening. A more elegant and distinguished group of people was unimaginable, and the renovation was stunning.

  I scanned the crowd for John Matthews, Ken Walker, and Paul Rhymer, but I couldn't find them. In the center of the rotunda, however, I saw the famous Fenykovi elephant, which had been unveiled in 1959. (I had read somewhere that a top Smithsonian administrator had demanded that its anus be sewn shut so that it wouldn't offend anyone at a previous opening.) Everyone was loose and happy and celebratory, eager to see what hadn't been seen in this place for decades: something new.

  Secretary Small got up onstage and welcomed everyone to this momentous event. While he spoke, my mind was filled with David Schwendeman's stories of the ribbon cutting for the Akeley Hall of African Mammals in 1936. How exciting it must have been to stand in that dark hall, listening to African drummers, while Akeley's dearest friends delivered heartfelt tributes to him. Then I remembered how the museum had decided to name the hall after Akeley instead of Theodore Roosevelt.

  Small praised Matthews and Rhymer for their tremendous effort, then Behring—truly moved by the occasion—walked up onstage and addressed the crowd. Finally, we were all summoned to "meet our relatives" in the new hall, which bore only one name: Kenneth E. Behring.

  It was sleek and modern, with bright lights and lots of glass: a Prada store filled with animals. The first thing I saw was a wall of framed animal photos meant to evoke my own family photos. I tried to smile, but I found the display somewhat patronizing, even for a kid. (I have a seven-year-old, and she knows that humans are mammals.) At the press conference the next morning, associate director Robert Sullivan told a group of reporters, "Once you free yourself from nineteenth-century-type displays, you can create odd juxtapositions." I thought he meant that figuratively, but the walrus was frightfully near the pink fairy armadillo, and the dolphin hung directly above the argali sheep. "Putting these guys on marble really elevates their status. We did that to treat them like sculpture," he said. And indeed, the European mole stood alone on a marble column.

  A leopard crouched high in an artificial tree. I followed it into the Africa zone, the hall's centerpiece. It was organized around an abstract water hole that resembled a gigantic Corian sink. I spotted the dramatic tableau of two lions attacking a Cape buffalo. Then the sky darkened and thunder crashed and lighting struck (the "ooh factor"), and I wasn't sure whether I should run or grab an umbrella. The audiovisual thunderstorm went off every ten minutes (an amplification more than an evocation); I stayed for only one storm. Television screens embedded in the floor like rocks in a stream flashed images of leaves and water: dry season, wet season; dry season, wet season; dry season, wet season.

  Blinding spotlights illuminated an abstract savanna. Xenon flashers flashed. Digitized animals crowed and growled and rustled for acorns. All 210 years of evolution (and its Discovery Zones) crescendoed to one cataclysmic big bang. The hall was very alive—so alive with the marvels of man that the animals seemed incongruous. "This hall is really about us," Sullivan said at the press conference. Although he meant mammals, the exhibits said otherwise.

  A tunnel into which I could burrow tempted me, but not in an evening gown, so I skipped it. I skirted the hominoid footprints (high heels—clearly not a problem 1.5 million years ago). The human presence was so intense that I missed the tableau of a bat nibbling the toes of a research scientist (the "gross-out factor"). Instead, I trekked through an abstract rain forest and a refrigerated tundra (crackling ice, howling wind), until, finally, I found the taxidermists chatting with their wives near the primate case.

  John Matthews had delivered all 274 mounts in time and under budget. Now he stood in the finished hall beaming, dressed in a tuxedo, his handlebar mustache waxed and groomed for the big event. Walker, wearing a black suit, had flown down from Alberta. He had run into Dr. Ruth, the sex therapist, at a preopening party and spent the night mimicking her: "You must remember to take off your pants. Hee, hee, hee!" Neither Small nor Behring had thanked Walker onstage, but he took it in stride. "I won't be acknowledged, but I'm glad to be here," he said.

  "Hey, the orangutan!" I shouted, catching it out of the corner of my eye. The last time I had seen it, it had been a frozen skin in a cardboard box. Now it was combed out and glossy, clutching stainless steel poles in a stark glass case without a habitat. You'd think it had been shot in Borneo, except for its queer grin, which ever so subtly suggested the taxidermists who had mounted it. "That's the love child of John and Paul," Walker said, laughing.

  I congratulated the taxidermists, who were filled with pride; took another peek at the Roosevelt rhino, the Tasmanian wolf, and the koala hugging a Lucite "tree"; and made my way out to the rotunda. The last thing I remember seeing was a hibernating metal squirrel.

  After the opening, Paul Rhymer returned to the National Museum of Natural History's exhibitions department, where he works as a modelmaker, taxidermist, and bracket maker (someone who articulates skeletons). John Matthews was dispatched to Newington to dismantle the taxidermy lab that he had set up three years ago. The job involved figuring out what to do with the unused specimens. Some were in good shape; others were mangy and faded. At the onset, Linda Gordon had been told that the "keepers" would be moved to the MSC for storage, but that was no longer an option, so she and John had to decide what to do with the mongrel lot.

  This was a shocking turn of events. Contrast the British Natural History Museum, which by law must preserve its specimens. In World War II, during the Blitz, the museum hauled thirty truckloads of stuffed animals (including its precious type specimens) to its annex at Tring for safekeeping. Likewise, in 1994, when the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle in Paris built its phenomenal Grande Galerie de l'Évolution, it dug a three-story underground storage facility, the zootheque, to house the unused specimens, some of which were part of the Cabinet du Roi in the 1740s.

  Here's what the Smithsonian did. First, it distributed the Behring and Martin specimens, which it had only recently acquired, to schools and nature centers. It saved several historic mounts, including a single Hornaday bison. And the rest, some preserved by Hornaday, Robert Rockwell, and other taxidermy pioneers, were hauled back to the National Museum of Natural History and, under a hazmat
tent, broken down into scraps. "We saved a sample of the skin, skull, or skeletal elements inside [each] mount to put into the scientific collections, and the rest of the mount—its stuffing or whatever it was—all of that was disposed of as hazardous waste," explained Gordon. "We sacrificed the skins for the skeletal material. It was a shame that we had to destroy them."

  On several occasions, Catharine Hawks observed museum workers taking apart the animal specimens. "It was horrifying," she said. Sometimes Hawks would bring in Amandine Péquignot, a conservation scientist at the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, who was doing postdoctoral work at the MSC. One day she described those trips for me: "I was shocked. I saw [them cut up] a wild pig—a boar—also a big deer, a chimpanzee. I went there three times with Cathy, and every time I was very sad and upset. It was an opportunity to study.

  "I was a little bit shocked at first because the condition of the specimen[s] was perfect. To see a whole specimen trashed, I imagined the taxidermists and the technique they used," she said, pausing to collect her thoughts. "You know they are dead, but it's like second death when you see them destroyed."

  I asked her about something I had learned from Gordon—namely, that the specimens were loaded with arsenic and asbestos and the museum would be liable if someone got sick from them. "I don't think they did a mercury or lead or arsenic test on them," she said. "But even if they have arsenic, mercury, or lead, that's no reason to destroy [them]. There are different techniques to remove arsenic and also store [a specimen] in good condition ... In the United States, if [something is] considered important, everything will be done to save it."

  In September 2004, John Matthews's contract expired. He had hoped that someone—Secretary Small, perhaps, who had put a few final stitches in the fifteen-foot reticulated giraffe—might find another job for him. Gordon, for one, could have used his help with the scientific skin collection. But nothing happened, and so, after seven years at the Smithsonian, he left.

  A year or so after the opening, I called Matthews, Paul Rhymer, and Ken Walker to see what they were up to. Matthews had been out of a job for two months when I reached him at home. He had joined the elevator union and was looking for work as a mechanic. "There's just no money in taxidermy," he said, setting down the receiver to calm his two-year-old son, who was crying in the background. "I'm burned-out on taxidermy," he said with resignation. "My interest has waned. I've had enough for now."

  When I asked Rhymer about the mammal hall, he said, "In those speeches [at the opening], we were mentioned a couple of times. That's unfathomable. I've never seen a production person get the type of credit we did throughout the whole process. It will never happen again. They put us in front of newspapers and magazines. The secretary came by. He loved that place." His voice radiated enthusiasm; the opening could have been the night before. "I really feel we were part of history," he continued. "Not in that same Hornaday sense. We were really more production people than experts. I know Hornaday was highly respected; only the secretary was paid more. He was a heavy hitter. That's not happening for me and John. I'm making labels for bison mummies. I'm not bitching and moaning, but it's just not going to happen."

  Of the three, only Walker was doing any real taxidermy work. He was back in Alberta, negotiating with Canadian customs to get them to release a walrus that he had hired Inuit hunters to kill for a client: Kenneth E. Behring. Alberta has comparatively relaxed laws regarding endangered species, but Walker needed money fast to cover importation costs. If it didn't arrive soon, the walrus would rot, and he'd lose face with the Inuit. "Millionaires never pay you!" he said.

  I told him that I had spoken to Matthews. "I talked to John last week, and he said, 'I'm going broke slowly,'" Walker told me. "I would have liked to see him stay there, because he liked the security it offered his family. He had a pension and a little bit of prestige. But I wouldn't wish that job on anyone. As much as I have to fight for every dime, it was so nice to be home after that. I'm so glad it's over. It's so politically motivated ... Politics change with fashion, but the laws of nature do not."

  5. THE CHAIRBITCH

  AT THE 2003 World Taxidermy Championships, the English bird judge Jack Fishwick told me about a sculptor who was arguably the best taxidermist in the United Kingdom—this, even though she became disillusioned with taxidermy years ago and now calls herself an "anti-taxidermist." Her name is Emily Mayer, and she lives with her husband, John Loker (an abstract painter), and any number of Jack Russell terriers in the Norfolk countryside, surrounded by dairy farms. With her spiky black hair, deep voice, and BITCH T-shirts, the village locals used to call her "that strange lesbian dog owner." Now they know her as a taxidermist who is vaguely associated with the arts. "Vaguely," of course, isn't quite accurate, yet it's not entirely wrong either. Mayer is at the very center of the art world and also on its fringes. It seems like a curious place for a taxidermist to be.

  At least Fishwick thought so, and he is a savage critic. But when he described Mayer's erosion-molded rats, he practically fogged up his binoculars. "The realism is uncanny," he gushed. "I mean the deathism." I shrugged. Racing off to England to see rats—even exceptional ones—wasn't on my agenda. Then Fishwick leaned in and whispered that Mayer was Damien Hirst's taxidermist: the woman who repairs the sharks, preserves the grizzlies, assembles the skeletons, and casts the cow heads for his multimillion-dollar artworks. I asked for her phone number.

  Mayer also happens to be an artist in her own right, with a degree from the Norwich School of Art and Design and a body of found-fragment sculptures the Times of London once compared to Ted Hughes's poetry. In Fishwick's words, "Anywhere you cut Emily's finger off, it will say 'art.'"

  For years, Mayer was the only woman taxidermist in England. She was also the first female chair of Britain's Guild of Taxidermists, the professional organization devoted to promoting taxidermy in the United Kingdom. When I finally called her, she invited me to attend its upcoming convention in Nottingham. I knew that taxidermy had evolved differently in Britain, where it is a cottage industry with long ties to modern zoology, than in the United States, with its predominant hunting culture, and I wanted to meet the descendants of early British taxidermists, some of the country's most passionate animal lovers.

  We decided to spend a few days at her house getting acquainted before the guild show. She'd tell me about herself and erosion molding, the technique she's perfected. The process is incredibly complicated (as I'd see on a later visit) but yields astonishing results. There's no manikin, since there's no skin to stretch over it. Instead, the inside of the animal is replaced with silicone (rubber); only the fur remains. Hirst likes the method because he can display animals submerged in water rather than toxic formaldehyde, and they won't rot or become tattered, theoretically eliminating the need for replacement tiger sharks.

  Because Mayer herself is so edgy, people tend to call erosion molding cutting-edge. It's more accurate to say that Mayer has rediscovered a forgotten technique (the Smithsonian has used it on some primates) and has pushed it farther than anyone: to the frightening point, in fact, where art is indistinguishable from life. Score one for taxidermy. Except for this: since erosion molding dispenses with the "derm" (and derm-less taxidermy is technically not taxidermy), taxidermists disdain her work as modelmaking. To Mayer, the distinction is semantic. "As long as you get the results, who cares!" she snaps with a dismissive air that belies how completely possessed she is by the absurd quest for utter realism.

  Hirst once told me that Mayer is the only taxidermist who can "make it real." But real for Mayer—a perfectionist who is completely unsentimental about animals in art—is nothing like a diorama, with its idealized nature. Real is really real, and reality is unsettling, because it is often ugly and macabre. She and Hirst share this morbid fascination. Hirst's sectioned cows and bisected sheep are often nothing more than the cut-up animal, yet they are considered shocking. Encased in glass, they are the opposite of a diorama and yet convey the same powerf
ul clashing of beauty and death. Mayer, like Hirst, loves to push the disturbance factor. As she puts it, "Animals die and kill things, and they lick their asses, and they shit. They just do stuff a taxidermist won't show. Taxidermists are all about the beauty of the animal. But I find beauty in death!"

  If you met Mayer, you wouldn't doubt that. Ever since she was a kid, she's been wildly unconventional—not outright rebellious or disobedient, simply determined to pursue her own dreams. And beginning when she was twelve, one of her dreams was to be a taxidermist. Born in 1960, the Chinese year of the rat, Mayer grew up in Greenwich, when that section of southeast London was seedy and working-class and attracted bohemian artists such as her parents, who let her turn her bedroom into what she called her museum. Mayer, who is still a compulsive scavenger (and eBay fanatic), filled the tiny room with eggs, bones, and especially animals—living, dead, common, exotic, incubated, dissected, mummified, decomposed, fossilized, skeletonized. ("I was doing this before bloody Damien Hirst," she jokes.) She skinned her first mouse when she was nine and preserved—and ate—her first bird (a gull) when she was eleven, much to the disgust of her brother and sister. On a high school career form, she wrote "taxidermist, pig farmer, and jack-of-all-trades." "They thought I was taking the piss!" she says, using the Briticism for making a joke. "I was serious!"