Life, living and lifelessness in taxidermy

Abstract

This chapter extends and further develops a recent paper by two of the authors, Sanders and Hohenstein, by both drawing in a curatorial perspective (Meehitiya) and examining how taxidermy display techniques impact on their potential for learning conversations about death. Our belief that taxidermic displays represent potential research spaces for understanding the impact of family communication on children’s understandings of life and death underscores a guided reflection on the merits of such displays for demonstrating ways in which families discuss concepts of life, and death. Furthermore, we maintain that such studies might facilitate new interdisciplinary relationships between museum curators and researchers, thus contributing to wider debate on the place of natural history collections in modern society.