Making Moa: spectacular science and natural history display at the Canterbury Museum and the national Museum of New Zealand, 1865-2006

Abstract

Because of its perceived objectivity - indeed its 'naturalness' - the display of the natural world has so far received modest attention from scholars of museum history and theory, especially in the New Zealand context. This dissertation aims to remedy this by tracing, comparing and contrasting the development of the display of natural history at Canterbury Museum and New Zealand's national museum (in its various manifestations) from 1865 to 2006. In doing so, the moa - the extinct flightless endemic bird - is used as a central case study to investigate how and why natural history has been displayed the way that it has over the past 150 years. There is tendency to consider 'spectacle' and 'science' as opposing concepts in museum's natural history displays. Indeed, the paradox of 'science versus spectacle' (encompassing considerations of education and entertainment) along with the changing depiction of nature, frames my research. This study employed a multi-method approach, including interviews with museum professionals, research in primary and secondary sources and the visual analysis of images of exhibits. Thorough historical research recovered evidence such as photographs, archival material and reports, natural history displays were reconstructed. A longitudinal perspective provided the cultural and historical context for such developments, accounting for changing views of the natural environment, museological shifts, changes in display practices, exhibition technologies and so on. This dissertation provides a new perspective on the display of the moa in New Zealand museums, building on the existing scholarship to fill the gap in the literature that neglects the analysis of natural history in terms of visuality and display. Constructions of the natural world shift from the decontextualisation of the nineteenth century, which increasingly became incorporated into naturalistic settings, to a 'holistic' approach that incorporates the human relationship with and impact on nature - 'social histories of nature' - of the present. Yet in the way they the moa is displayed in museums we see the co-existence of science and spectacle throughout. The main conclusion is that instead of persisting with a oppositional notion of 'science versus spectacle' in museum display we should consider them as an indissoluble and ever-present amalgam, what we might call 'spectacular science.'