Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette The museum's Stephen Rogers, a leading expert in the field of taxidermy, is collection manager for the bird as well as the reptile and amphibian sections. He's framed by one of two rhinos that are part of the new taxidermy exhibit.

By Bob Batz Jr.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

An exhibit opening today at Carnegie Museum of Natural History knocks the stuffing out of exhibits there that have been dear to generations.

Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette Carnegie Museum of Natural History has about 1,275 taxidermied mounts, about 350 of which are on exhibit. Some usually in storage are part of a new exhibit. Click photo for larger image. Multimedia Slideshow: The art of taxidermy "Stuffed Animals: The Art and Science of Taxidermy" Where: Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Oakland. When: Through Sept. 3. Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays (and Mondays between July 4 and Labor Day) and noon-5 p.m. Sundays. Tickets: $10 adults; $7 seniors; $6 for children ages 3-18 and full-time students. 412-622-3131 or www.carnegiemnh.org. Related Coverage Museums plan Wild Wednesday Nights

The new exhibit is called "Stuffed Animals: The Art and Science of Taxidermy," and it really goes beneath the surface of the mounted mammals and birds that were the institution's backbone after it opened in 1896.

The empty museum first borrowed, then bought thousands of mounted creatures and soon hired the first of a line of distinguished taxidermists, who've had huge hands in shaping the institution into what it is today.

In fact, Andrew Carnegie may have gotten the idea to start the natural history museum from a taxidermist he met while ordering a tiger-skin rug in Singapore.

"Stuffed animals" is not a proper taxidermy term, but early specimens were simply stuffed with cotton or hay. Visitors can get an up-close look at the lack of detail in a massive white rhinoceros (1901) and compare it to a better-prepared black rhinoceros (circa 1920) also brought out of storage for this display in the Hall of Sculpture.

They can also head upstairs to the Hall of African Wildlife and see all the wrinkles in the cast of another black rhino mounted by Carnegie taxidermists around 1920. That one happens to have been donated by none other than Teddy Roosevelt, who on a 1912 visit here was "astonished" to see the rare white rhino mount.

"The idea is to show the progression from the era of stuffing ... to where they actually made art," says Stephen Rogers. He works as collection manager of the museum's Bird as well as Reptiles & Amphibians sections. But he is a leading expert in the field of taxidermy, which means "movement of the skin." He coined his own term to personify his passion for it: "Taxidermologist."

Using one of the world's best collections of books and journals, he's writing a big manuscript that helped form and inform this temporary exhibit, which features 40 mounted specimens. Many of the items have interesting histories of their own, such as the death mask of George, a gorilla who died at the Pittsburgh Zoo in 1978.

The rather demonically red-eyed albino squirrel was prepared by a 10-year-old Kentucky boy, who sold it to the museum in 1905 for a not-too-shabby $7.50.

The exhibit includes recent X-rays that show the wires, and some of the bones, inside the squirrel and other mounts. Displays show how techniques evolved to include elaborate measures for thinly shaving and tanning hides and mounting them on biologically accurate forms of wood, metal and clay. "Today's taxidermists are getting into really critical details," such as the exact placement of eyelashes, Mr. Rogers notes.

An amateur taxidermist, he appreciates the science and craftsmanship of it, but he says taxidermy also is art, "because you have to be able to sculpt the animal into the form that it had in life."

The branch-mounted albino squirrel, also taken out of storage, is less white than it once was, but Mr. Rogers figures anyone would be after enduring a century of Pittsburgh soot and temperature extremes.

The taxidermy exhibit can give visitors new appreciation for the many realistic mounts and dioramas throughout the museum, because it tells how many of the animals were prepared decades ago. In fact, very little new taxidermy has been done in the past 20 years, but dioramas have been reconfigured and updated.

The museum's most famous taxidermy exhibit -- "Arab Courier Attacked by Lions," which depicts a man (just a mannequin) on a camel being attacked by two Barbary lions -- won a gold medal at the 1867 Paris Exposition. It was acquired by the American Museum of Natural History, which, after the public sensation faded, sold it to Carnegie Museum for $25. That was in 1899. Carnegie taxidermists restored it and remounted it in a four-sided glass case, where it's attracted -- and repelled -- various viewers since.

In that sense, says Mr. Rogers, taxidermy is "an art form not a whole lot different than a DaVinci painting or a sculpture by Rodin." And in fact, several mounted birds and other artifacts from the natural history museum figure into the big show happening (through Aug. 27) next door at Carnegie Museum of Art: "Fierce Friends: Artists and Animals, 1750-1900."

Mr. Rogers points out that in the days before TV and the Internet, when travel was limited to the very wealthy, taxidermy was the only way many people could see some of these actual animals, much less study them so closely.

(The exhibit includes the early entertainment form of 3-D stereophotograph cards, which taxidermists helped popularize.)

It wasn't even that long ago, because of factors such as deforestation, that most Pennsylvanians had never seen a white-tailed deer, but for the ones at the museum.

Taxidermied specimens still are the only way to see some extinct animals. The museum's Bird Hall has a pair of ivory-billed woodpeckers, which were thought to be long-gone until a recent discovery in Arkansas, and a replica of the dodo.

Other standouts visitors can seek out elsewhere in the museum include the endangered Giant Sable, which can be viewed at only a handful of other places in the United States.

Mr. Rogers knows that some people don't like the killing of animals, but says taxidermists aren't the ones who typically did the killing. Taxidermists have long considered themselves conservationists who help give others an appreciation for the natural world, Mr. Rogers says. "They preserved it."