Items

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  Foto de Salomón Briceño Gabaldón (1829-1912), taxidermist in Mérida, Venezuela

  Salomón Briceño Gabaldón (1829-1912) es un excelente ejemplo de una especie de "centro de conexiones científicas". Aprendió taxidermia directamente del propio pintor, naturalista, viajero y taxidermista alemán Christian Anton Göring (1836-1905). A su vez, Göring había aprendido el oficio de su padre, en Alemania. Christian Antón llegó a Venezuela en 1866, y en 1869 llegó a Mérida, donde permaneció un tiempo, y conoció a Briceño Gabaldón. Este último llegó a ser tan competente en la profesión que envió ejemplares durante más de 20 años a museos de Europa y Estados Unidos. Además, Briceño Gabaldón enseñó el oficio a un hijo y una hija, que continuaron su tarea de colecta, taxidermia y envío a colecciones, sobre todo europeas por varias décadas después de su muerte. Un nutrido grupo de sus especímenes fueron conocidos por primera vez para las ciencias gracias a sus envíos a los museos metropolitanos. En total, la familia Gabaldón preparó más de mil ejemplares durante más de 70 años ininterrumpidos, haciendo circular conocimiento sobre vertebrados de los Andes venezolanos entre Sudamérica, Norteamérica y Europa. Consideramos a la figura del personaje tan estimulante, y con una serie de ramificaciones y extensiones de su trabajo e influencia, que juzgamos necesario proponer la difusión de su fotografía, acompañada de esa breve reseña biográfica. Se tendría con él un ejemplo de un naturalista criollo, que sobresale en su arte, y es capaz de imponer nueva información a museos y centros de cálculo europeos y norteamericanos, realizando un labor titánica, en una época donde las condiciones de trabajo y procesamiento de esa muestras no eran precisamente fáciles. Además, formando a una generación de sucesores en el culto de su arte/oficio. Tratándose de solamente una foto de una única persona, se podría llegar a pensar que la información que ésta aporta al observador sea limitada. Por ello, ha hecho falta aportar información adicional, en forma de una breve introducción a su biografía y logros científicos y de trabajo, como la expuesta en la pregunta anterior.
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  The Saint Domingue Albums

  Between 1766 and 1784, René Gabriel de Rabié, an engineer who worked in the French colony of Saint Domingue (now Haiti), painted over 320 watercolours of plants and animals. His natural history enterprise was aided by multiple collaborators including his daughter and grandson and numerous unnamed enslaved people who collected and prepared specimens, and assisted in their preservation and depiction. De Rabié identified his specimens using both French and Kréyol names, and provided observations of habitat, distribution and behaviours. His daughter and grandson added glosses to the works, which were bound in Paris in the mid-19th century. De Rabié was one of a number of French naturalists whose work informed the natural histories of Buffon and the scientists of the Jardin des plantes in Paris. The watercolours themselves survived the depredations of insects and the Caribbean climate, revolutions in Haiti and France, transatlantic crossings, and rejection by the Muséum d’histoire naturelle, to be offered for sale by a rare book dealer in England, where they were examined by a curator at the Smithsonian, and acquired in 1930 by Dr Casey Wood, founder of the Blacker Wood Natural History Collection at McGill University Library in Montreal. The Saint Domingue Albums are evidence of the intersection of European, Caribbean, and African ways of understanding the natural world. The survival of the watercolours in the albums speak to the importance accorded to the culture of natural history in the colonial French Caribbean. In collaboration with historians, artists, ornithologists, entomologists, and botanists in Canada, Haiti, the United States, Italy and France, de Rabié’s collection is becoming part of the global history of natural history. Thanks to partnerships with La Sociéte haïtienne d'histoire, de géographie et de géologie and Le Jardin botanique des Cayes (Haiti), it is becoming a resource for the study of Haiti’s history and environment, accessible in English, French and Kreyol.
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  Intersex Somatotype

  This figurine was used during the Second World War to help students without clinical experience ‘recognize’, diagnose, and treat the supposedly pathological traits of intersex peoples’ bodies. As a teaching aid and visual representation, this somatotype demonstrates medical and scientific institutions’ role in solidifying oppressive biases across generations of practitioners. The project that created these somatotypes was inspired by similar models made at Johns Hopkins in the United States, showing how a transnational network of medical expertise interacted with the local practices solidifying the pathologization of intersex people among Canadians. In a 1999 interview, Marjorie Winslow (the artist) recalled that Dr. Robertson encouraged her to exaggerate the 'abnormal' qualities while sculpting the somatotypes. In this case, Winslow used actual human hair to simulate the body hair, pubic hair and moustache that physicians viewed as indicative of the supposed ‘pathology’.
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  Taxidermized punarés (Thricodomys aperoides)

  These rodents were collected in the northeast of Brazil and sent to the National Museum, in Rio de Janeiro, where they were studied alongside other animals as part of research into disease ecology. Studying rodents like the punarés was essential for understanding the endemicity of infectious diseases in Brazil and, more broadly, in South America in the 1950s. Capturing and taxidermizing these animals involved many people, spanning from hunters and peasants to doctors and naturalists, each with distinct skills and knowledge. Most of these actors were Brazilians, but South American experts from Chili and Argentina were also involved in some of these activities. As is common in the study of ecology, scholars had to rely on rural communities and their deep knowledge of local fauna.