Image Credit: CFJC Today

By Adam Donnelly

STILL LIFE

Kamloops Museum showcases taxidermy collection in newest exhibition

Dec 6, 2019 | 5:00 PM

KAMLOOPS — For some, it’s majestic. Others may think it’s barbaric. Taxidermy is a way to preserve animals in a life-like state, whether it’s for hunters to display their trophies or for museums to record examples of different species. The Kamloops Museum and Archives current;y have their entire taxidermy collection on display as part of their newest exhibition titled Still Life.

Once the Kamloops Museum and Archive displayed all of the taxidermy pieces in their collection, there wasn’t much room to maneuver around the exhibit.

“For us to get all the animals on the floor at once was an achievement,” Museum Curator Matt Macintosh says. “We’re also using it as a way to produce knowledge around the animals in the form of a catalogue.”

“We have over 133 mounts displayed,” Museum Supervisor Julia Cyr. “It’s probably the first time this collection has been comprehensively shown together.”

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Macintosh spent hours carefully organizing the mounts for the exhibition. He arranged them based on the type of animal.

“One of the reasons we put the animals arranged by type is that it echoes a museum process of arranging them taxonomically,” Macintosh explains. “That’s arranging them by types in a systematic way, which is also part of this cataloguing process.”

There are birds, bears, badgers, bull moose – event a fully intact cougar. There are a wide variety of specimens sure to pique everyone’s interest.

“We have an armadillo. That’s something you wouldn’t see around Kamloops,” Cyr says. “I think it’s the skin – the way it curls up, the tail. All those little elements – you need to get close to and look at.”

Image Credit: CFJC Today

While touching the display is off-limits, Macintosh says there are ways to interact with the exhibition. There is a full list of all the specimens, including their scientific and their Secwepemc names, as well as opportunities to get a bit artistic.

“People can come in and participate,” Macintosh explains. “There are opportunities to draw like an early biologist or naturalist might. There are opportunities to correct portions of our catalogue. We’ve got the catalogue on the floor, and it’s a real evolving document. And we’re hoping that by highlighting the way museums organize information, that’s just one way of organizing information, and organizing our experience with nature and the animals that inhabit it.”

Still Life: KMA Taxidermy Collection is on at the Museum until April 4th, 2020.