Palace of Deception (eBook)

Museum Men and the Rise of Scientific Racism

Darrin Lunde (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025
288 Seiten
W. W. Norton & Company (Verlag)
9781324065685 (ISBN)

Infos

An eye-opening look into the founding of the American Museum of Natural History and its original racial underpinnings.From 1908 to 1933, the American Museum of Natural History launched more scientific field expeditions than at any other time in its existence. Sponsoring lavish trips to Africa and Central Asia, the museum filled its halls with artifacts and an aura of adventure, supported by some of New York Citys most prominent men, including Theodore Roosevelt and J. P. Morgan. All the while, the museums then president, Henry Fairfield Osborn, attempted to use his adventurers expeditions to fulfill a personal agenda: to propagate his belief in racial hierarchy.Palace of Deception uncovers the complicated legacy of three iconic figures of the American Museum: the preeminent explorer Roy Chapman Andrews; Carl Akeley, the pioneering taxidermist who created so many of the museums most memorable exhibits; and Osborn, the museums president, who was once considered an authority on everything from paleontology and evolution to race and eugenics. From Andrewss ambitions searching for fossils in the Gobi Desert to the construction of Akeleys artistic masterpiece, the Hall of African Mammals, Darrin Lunde tells the story of the Americans Museum foundational years. Lunde also shows how the achievements of the museums adventurers were used to introduce residents of New York to a version of the natural worldone full of strict natural laws and categoriesendorsed by the museums powerful leader.Based on extensive diaries, letters, journals, and the authors own experiences leading modern-day expeditions to several of the same places, Palace of Deception re-creates some of the most celebrated, globe-trotting journeys from natural historys heyday. It also traces the larger, racially infused milieu that underwrote the golden age of exploration, uncovering the simmering anxieties about race behind the eras greatest adventures. It is a legacy that still haunts natural history institutions today.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 4.11.2025
• Zusatzinfo: 24 illustrations
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Kunst / Musik / Theater
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Geschichte / Politik ► 20. Jahrhundert bis 1945
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Neuzeit (bis 1918)
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Hilfswissenschaften
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften ► Biologie
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften ► Geowissenschaften ► Geografie / Kartografie
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
• Schlagworte: adventurers • American racism • Anthropologists • Eugenics • human origins • instututionalized racism • museum exploration • Museum History • ornithologists • racism justifications • scientific racism • system racism
• ISBN-13: 9781324065685 / 9781324065685