American Museum Of Natural History Research Articles

Review: Mediums and Magical Things: Statues, Paintings, and Masks in Asian Places, by Laurel Kendall

Mediums and Magical Things opens with an episode in which the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology unintentionally stored three goddess statues in a way that the statues’ donors found disrespectful. Laurel Kendall uses this incident to begin her investigation of how, when, and why statues (Vietnam and Myanmar), paintings (South Korea), and masks (Bali) take on the power of the gods they depict. She also analyzes what this power means for the artists, ritual specialists, merchants, and tourists who encounter these objects.The first chapter introduces the volume’s theoretical and methodological framework. Kendall, an anthropologist and the curator of Asian History at the American Museum of Natural History, acknowledges the baggage of “magic” as a theoretical concept, but argues that the term still communicates most effectively what she would otherwise refer to as “technologies of sacred production” (10). She brings the same critical eye to the method of comparison, which she mobilizes to resist, rather than support, the idea that magical things share a universal essence.The second chapter addresses the processes by which statues, paintings, and masks become ensouled. Kendall shows that the material objects are not innately animated but, rather, must be activated through rituals that can fail. The next chapter moves back to examine the raw materials of statues, paintings, and masks, and the artistic processes of creating these objects. The anthropologist consistently attends to how media in different countries animate in their own specific ways. While gods “transmit irregularly through the pictures in the shrine” of South Korean mansin ritual specialists (59), enlivened Balinese temple masks are treated as charged objects that could potentially cause harm.Kendall then considers how the deity, image, and ritual specialist form an assemblage that operates—if temporarily and contingently—as an agentive whole. Jane Bennett’s description of the electrical grid as an assemblage would further support Kendall’s observations about her informants’ metaphors of electricity linking deity, object, and person (2005). The author again attends to key differences: South Korean mansin claim more control than do spirit mediums in Vietnam and Myanmar, while in Bali, the god and its mask are in charge.Chapter 5 pushes back against the dichotomy between carefully crafted objects and mass-produced commodities. Kendall argues that god images produced in rationalized workshops and/or for tourist consumption can also demonstrate efficacy. She cites the example of the “Jero Amerika” Balinese mask sold to a North American tourist, which exhibited its powers (and terrified its owners) despite being a “pure commodity.”The final chapter looks at how museumification further transforms ensouled objects, especially when the objects have been stolen. A pilfered object may retain its potency to the point of endangering those who trafficked it, or even those who encounter it. Objects can be ritually de-ensouled in preparation for the market, including the museum market, but these processes can be incomplete or uncertain.The conclusion revisits the book’s theoretical frame, starting with the three affordances of 1) the making of religious images, 2) the expectation of the images’ ensoulment, and 3) understandings of these images as ensouled. While these qualities may all apply to the four regions covered in this study, regional differences in the production and understanding of images of the divine demonstrate why the descriptor “animism” remains a poor fit for these phenomena.Mediums and Magical Things leaves opportunities for other scholars to grapple further with the questions that the author raises. There are always more cases to consider, and the places where Kendall spent relatively less time—Myanmar and Bali—could receive more attention in future studies. Likewise, Mediums and Magical Things consistently engages Walter Benjamin’s argument that art loses its auratic quality in the age of its mechanical reproducibility, but the book does not address more recent theories of enchantment and disenchantment in the modern age.Mediums and Magical Things makes a valuable contribution to the study of material religion, anthropology of religion, and religion in modernity. It is a timely volume that will no doubt fulfill Kendall’s hope that it “propel others down similar paths” (184).

Review: Green Persuasion: Advertising, Voluntarism, and America’s Public Lands, by Jeffrey K. Stine

Review: <i>Green Persuasion: Advertising, Voluntarism, and America’s Public Lands</i>, by Jeffrey K. Stine

South Jersey Fossil Collection Donated to American Museum of Natural History

Between 1970 and 1987, Michael Bernstein collected marine fossils from previously known localities in Cumberland, Salem, Gloucester, Camden, and Burlington Counties, and from a few localities he discovered. Most of the specimens are invertebrates, although shark teeth, reptile bones, wood, and a fine coprolite were also found. The bones include two adjoining peripherals from the carapace of a sea turtle, found in 1985 at the dinosaur locality in Haddonfield and donated to the New Jersey State Museum (Registration No. 85.34.2.2.1 dated July 3, 1985). In November 2021, his invertebrate collection (about 640 lots in total; 550 curated) was donated to the American Museum of Natural History in New York for permanent preservation. In this piece, Michael discusses highlights from the collections.

Utilization of Community Science Data to Explore Habitat Suitability of Basal Termite Genera

AbstractThe advent of community-science databases in conjunction with museum specimen locality information has exponentially increased the power and accuracy of ecological niche modeling (ENM). Increased occurrence data has provided colossal potential to understand the distributions of lesser known or endangered species, including arthropods. Although niche modeling of termites has been conducted in the context of invasive and pest species, few studies have been performed to understand the distribution of basal termite genera. Using specimen records from the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) as well as locality databases, we generated ecological niche models for 12 basal termite species belonging to six genera and three families. We extracted environmental data from the Worldclim 19 bioclimatic dataset v2, along with SoilGrids datasets and generated models using MaxEnt. We chose Optimal models based on partial Receiving Operating characteristic (pROC) and omission rate criterion and determined variable importance using permutation analysis. We also calculated response curves to understand changes in suitability with changes in environmental variables. Optimal models for our 12 termite species ranged in complexity, but no discernible pattern was noted among genera, families, or geographic range. Permutation analysis revealed that habitat suitability is affected predominantly by seasonal or monthly temperature and precipitation variation. Our findings not only highlight the efficacy of largely community-science and museum-based datasets, but our models provide a baseline for predictions of future abundance of lesser-known arthropod species in the face of habitat destruction and climate change.

Identity of Zorotypus juninensis Engel, 2000, syn. nov. revealed: it is conspecific with Centrozoros hamiltoni (New, 1978) (Zoraptera, Spiralizoridae)

Zorotypus juninensisEngel, 2000, was previously diagnosed based on the external morphology of female and male specimens without description of the male copulatory organ, which is an important character for classification in Zoraptera. Based on a detailed morphological study of theZorotypus juninensisEngel, 2000 type collections deposited in the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and based on the comparison with the holotype male ofCentrozoros hamiltoni(New, 1978), we have determined that these two species are conspecific. We therefore formally synonymizeZorotypus juninensisEngel, 2000,syn. nov.withCentrozoros hamiltoni(New, 1978). Morphological characters and phylogenetic relationships ofCentrozorosKukalova-Peck &amp; Peck, 1993 are also discussed in this report.

Margaret Mead: A Twentieth-Century Faith. By Elesha J. Coffman

In Margaret Mead: A Twentieth-Century Faith, Elesha J. Coffman has written a critically compassionate “spiritual life” of Margaret Mead that both surprises and intrigues. One of the most—if not the most—famous anthropologists of the twentieth century, Mead was a prolific writer, tireless public speaker, museum curator, television personality, magazine columnist, advisor to presidents, anti-nuclear activist, and, eventually, a professor at Columbia University. She was also an Episcopalian from the age of eleven, when she chose to become baptized in the face of her father’s ridicule. Later in life, she took on national level churchwork on committees on liturgy, sacred spaces, and nuclear energy and frequently served as an (often frustrated) advisor to both the National and the World Council of Churches. Like many mid-century women academics, Mead found her pathway to professional life through cobbling together prestige and money in the cracks of a white, male-dominated, tenured hierarchy. From her attic rooms in the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, she directed a team of collaborators and students who saw anthropology as a practice of holding a mirror to American society by writing about the cultures of others.

Derby Hyposaurus: a historical review and update of its whereabouts

ABSTRACT The Dyrosauridae Hyposaurus derbianus Cope was loaned by Orville A. Derby in 1880 to Edward D. Cope to be studied. After Cope’s death the specimens were not returned and toured several foreign institutions like the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the National History Museum (NHM) in London. We accessed several documents of the Memory and Archive Sector of the National Museum of Brazil (Museu Nacional/Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro) to elucidate the real trajectory of the H. derbianus holotype. We noticed several errors in the literature, going from the assignment of the specimen as a syntype, even though it is a holotype according to the ICZN, to registration number problems. In addition, photographs of specimen PV R 8672, previously taken at the NHM, describing it as a cast of H. derbianus in the NHM’s official website, were correlated with the original material studied by Cope and recognised through the labels of the Museu Nacional/UFRJ and the Geological Commission of the Brazilian Empire (Comissão Geológica do Império). Lastly, despite the fire at the Museu Nacional/UFRJ and the limitations imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, we were able to locate the holotypes at the NHM and elucidate its history.

Podcast: There’s more to James Harris’s story

Chemists may know James Harris as the first Black scientist to be credited with codiscovering an element. We referenced this in a previous episode of Stereo Chemistry about making superheavy elements. But details about the accomplished nuclear chemist’s role in the discovery are scarce, and most sources repeat the same superficial information. Kristen Frederick-Frost, curator of modern science at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, wants to change that. After discovering that the museum’s database lacked material on Harris, she scoured archival records and sought out former colleagues, friends, and family members to fill in details of his life and career. In this bonus episode of Stereo Chemistry , host Kerri Jansen and special guest Darryl Boyd join Frederick-Frost to explore James Harris’s story beyond the discoveries that made him famous. And we even get an unexpected peek into his lab, courtesy of the US National Archives. Listen at

Review: Curating America’s Painful Past: Memory, Museums, and the National Imagination, by Tim Gruenewald

Review: <i>Curating America’s Painful Past: Memory, Museums, and the National Imagination</i>, by Tim Gruenewald

From small beginnings: to build an anti-eugenic future

September, 1921 was unusually hot and New York was sweltering. For the many immigrants who crowded the city's tenements and pavements, one of the few places for relief from the incessant heat was the American Museum of Natural History. That summer the museum presented a new exhibition with rows of human skulls, snapshots of patients in psychiatric institutions, and the preserved brain of a serial killer. It was all terribly macabre. The immigrants among the museum's visitors who read the leaflet distributed at the entrance soon discovered that this exhibition was all about them. It included charts showing how migration eroded societies, statistics from IQ tests of arrivals at Ellis Island, and posters spouting anti-migrant rhetoric. All conveyed the same message: “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” were not welcome here.

The use of nanostructured fluids for the removal of polymer coatings from a Nuxalk monumental carving – exploring the cleaning mechanism

• Nuxalk painted carving conserved at AMNH was darkened by aged organic coatings • The stubborn coating was identified via FTIR and NMR as aged poly(vinyl acetal) • Poly(vinyl acetal) could not be removed using conventional methodologies • Nanofluids-loaded PVA-based hydrogels were used to successfully clean the carving • Lab experiments were performed to unveil the physico-chemical cleaning mechanism While undertaking treatment of a monumental Northwest Coast wooden carving at the American Museum of Natural History, conservators encountered a difficult cleaning challenge. The 19 th century painted red cedar carving served as a house entry pole in the Nuxalk village of Bella Coola in the province of British Columbia, Canada. The painted surface was weathered by years out of doors in front of the house of Chief Pootlass and obscured by darkened museum-applied coatings and grime acquired during more than 100 years of open display at the museum. The methods used to reduce the grime and cellulose nitrate coating found on the surface overall were not successful when applied to the green painted areas on the bottom of the pole, as it was covered with an additional coating of poly(vinyl acetal) resin. The present work reports on the testing and use of aqueous nanostructured fluids (NSFs) and hydrogels for succesfully cleaning these areas, where other methods could not be used safely. There have only been a few published examples of these recently developed cleaning fluids and gels being used on art objects and this is the first known use on this type of material. Further analyses were performed following the cleaning. Micro-reflectance FTIR, optical microscopy, SEM-EDX, and NMR were used to characterize paint and coating samples taken from the carving. In addition, laboratory tests were performed to evaluate the response of poly(vinyl acetal) to a selection of NSFs, providing an understanding of the mechanisms underlying the successful cleaning performed on the pole by the conservators.

A review of the genus Paraleptomenes Giordani Soika, 1970 (Hymenoptera, Vespidae, Eumeninae) from China, with descriptions of two new species

In this paper, a total of five species of the genus Paraleptomenes Giordani Soika, 1970 is reported from China, including two new species and two newly recorded species. The two new species P. setaceussp. nov. and P. transfoveolussp. nov. are described and illustrated in detail. P. darugiriensis Kumar, Carpenter &amp;amp; Sharma, 2014 and P. nurseanus montanus Giordani Soika, 1994 are first recorded from China. Photos of the type specimen of P. kosempoensis (Schulthess, 1934) deposited in the American Museum of Natural History are provided. Furthermore, a key to the world species of Paraleptomenes is updated.

Natural Practices: The Creative Autonomy Encoded within First Nations Dye and Weaving Processes of the Chilkat Blanket

This article describes two research residencies undertaken at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) during the months of August and October 2019, wherein Dr. Mark Joseph O’Connell looked specifically at weaving and dye techniques found in a form of ceremonial dancing blanket called the Chilkat. The examination of these artifacts provides valuable information on pre-colonial First Nations industry, the ongoing impacts of colonial processes, and also offers clues to a pre-colonial fashion history, one that re-contextualizes these exquisitely crafted garments and thereby re-situates them within previously held notions of political and social spheres of community life. This research provides a more nuanced and inclusive framework of Canadian fashion history, as well as information concerning pre-colonial First Nations industry and the ongoing impacts of colonial processes; It also to highlights the extraordinary techniques and iconography employed in their manufacture. Efforts toward cultural preservation through creative labor can also be examined through Chilkat artistry, as craft-based agency has served as a conduit for preserving cultural history as well as providing an ongoing means of ensuring First Nations autonomy and agency.

Mongolia’s Fossilised Heritage

Abstract It has been almost 100 years since the pioneering expedition of the American Museum of Natural History (New York) to the Gobi Desert led by Roy Chapman Andrews in 1922. Therefore, it is an opportune time to examine the contribution Andrews made to palaeontology in central Asia and to consider the question of education and repatriation in the context of the protection of Mongolia’s fossilised heritage. Furthermore, this paper investigates the threat to Mongolia’s rare and exceptional cultural heritage posed by modern-day fossil poachers along with domestic efforts to combat the illicit fossil trade in central Asia. This paper concludes with an examination of the repatriation from the United States of Tarbosaurus bataar and the establishment of the Central Museum of Mongolian Dinosaurs dedicated to repatriated dinosaur specimens.

The Whiteness of Birds

AbstractThis essay frames the 2020 Central Park bird-watching incident, in which a white financial analyst called police on a Black bird-watcher, in the context of histories of settler colonialism, extraction, and white supremacy. Situating ornithology as a white way of seeing, it considers the extermination and extinction of birds in terms of fugitivity, necrography, and eugenics, engaging the work of Audubon and the collection and display of birds at the American Museum of Natural History. It closes with a reflection on the Assembly of Birds in Aotearoa New Zealand, as depicted by painter Bill Hammond, and the work of decolonizing extinction.

Observations from the Analysis of the Gelatin Silver Emulsion Layer of Glass Photographic Inter-Positive Plates from Eadweard Muybridge’s Animal Locomotion Series at the National Museum of American History

ABSTRACT The Photographic History Collection at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History houses the largest collection of glass photographic plates from Eadweard Muybridge’s Animal Locomotion series. These images are the immediate predecessor to moving pictures and serve as an invaluable research tool for those seeking to better understand Muybridge’s process and place in the history of photography. As part of a survey of the condition of this collection, analysis of the materials and deterioration products found on these plates was conducted. This paper focuses on observations made during the analysis of the image-bearing gelatin emulsion layer of these objects, as the deterioration and loss of this layer is the most compromising to the identity and significance of the objects themselves. The analysis was performed on image plates and fragments that have become disassociated from their original composite panels. The results of the analyses included: the identification of the gelatin and image forming materials, new information about the photographic processes used in the production of these plates, namely the use of mercury intensification, and significant insights into the various mechanisms of deterioration found on these objects including silver mirroring, water damage, and gelatin cracking, which threaten the long-term stability of this collection.

The New Allison and Roberto Mignone Halls of Gems and Minerals at the American Museum of Natural History, New York City

The New Allison and Roberto Mignone Halls of Gems and Minerals at the American Museum of Natural History, New York City

Sharing the Journey: Museums and Culinary Tourism

Museums and historic sites have incorporated food-related material into their exhibitions and programs over many years. The extent to which culinary content draws tourists is difficult to pinpoint, but organizations have found that food-related exhibitions, programs, and events resonate in important ways with travelers and local residents alike. In the past two decades, more museums have moved beyond simply adding food and drink components to their programming calendars, and have built entire initiatives around food research, collecting, and public engagement involving critical issues such as migration, cultural representation, equity and accessibility, and environmental sustainability. The American Food History Project at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History (NMAH) in Washington, D.C., is one such initiative and serves as a case study.

My Bedeviled Country

My Bedeviled Country Susan Neville (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Photo courtesy of Division of Medicine and Science, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution [End Page 110] I have in my mind a special room with iron doors. The things I don't like I throw in there and slam the doors. —Edith Head Events as I remember them, when placed over the historical record of an era, do not add up. They harmonize, but barely, creating a fuzzy line of historical and personal memory that makes me question whether I existed in that time at all. For instance, it's as though there was a decade known as the '70s with a certain narrative that, like a black hole, pulls all memories of those years, both personal and public, toward it but leaves them in a jumbled mess. I don't know whether to attribute this most to the failure of memory, the power of myth, or something else entirely. [End Page 111] So. It was a weeknight my junior or senior year of college, in the spring as I remember, the first years of the 1970s, when the campus doctor gave a presentation in the freshman dorm. I was in my early twenties. I was a woman, I thought, a sexual being, no longer a girl. And so everything seemed newly born. Even the names of things as simple as flowers were new to me, as though spring hadn't really existed until I woke up and noticed it. Tulip, lilac, daffodil, forsythia. Suddenly I could name them. Where had I been all my life? I walked through that Midwestern college town as though it were a movie set or water, walked through it as though I'd never experienced the pressure of air on my skin, the sweet scent and texture of it. The light in the lobby of that dorm was greenish gold as I remember it, that particular spring light that surrounds the doctor in my memory now, holding up a plastic implement so we all could see. He stood, I think, in front of a black grand piano. But how old was I exactly, and which spring, and why am I remembering the event in the lobby of a freshman dorm I never lived in? I'm not sure. I don't remember what the doctor looked like, but I remember that he was earnest. I remember the light, the device (the thing itself or an image from the packaging?) and the grand piano. What could possibly have gotten into the doctor's head that made him feel the need to gather all the female students together one spring afternoon to—as I'm sure he thought—make our lives better? A kickback? Impossible. I only think of that now that I'm old and cynical, but it's hard for me to believe my older, more cynical self. He wasn't a person who gave speeches or the type of adult who would put young women's lives at risk for money. While I can't picture him as he really was, it's incredible how easily my memory rushes in to fill the blank space of him: I believe I remember thinking that the poor, round, bespectacled, middle-aged balding man must spend all his time worrying about us, the young women having sex day and night, with only one doctor to keep us safe. The campus was the rye, and he was our catcher. I was sure at the time that he saw himself that way. Or maybe he was jealous of the professors holding forth, and he wanted his moment. Who knows? We assumed, if we thought of him at all, that he was some kind of failure or he would have been a real doctor still—because of course he must have left some lucrative practice due to a scandal. Now he was a campus doctor, down on his luck, who lived in a small town and gave us our prescriptions for the pill. He did the tests for [End Page 112] venereal and other infectious diseases. Aside from your basic colds and cases of...

Author Meets Critics: Green Persuasion: Advertising, Voluntarism, and America's Lands

Abstract: This Author Meets Critics article focuses on Jeffrey K. Stine's open access book Green Persuasion: Advertising, Voluntarism, and America's Lands (Smithsonian Scholarly Press, 2021). In addition to including a series of videos with advertising experts discussing the book, this article provides an interview with Stine about his career in environmental history, his work as environmental curator at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History, his research on the environment and advertising, and some advice for practitioners, professors, and students. Scholars discussing the book cover topics including: the use of individualism in public service campaigns; how campaigns have deflected responsibility away from government and industry; effective ways to communicate about the environment and climate change; how to inspire and educate young people about getting involved with climate and environmental issues; and advice for instructors and practitioners. Throughout the discussion, panelists refer to significant public service advertising campaigns focused on the environment and public lands in the United States such as Keep America Beautiful, Smokey Bear, and Take Pride in America.