Exhibiting The Gaze

The Natural History Museum’s inaugural exhibition took place at the Queens Museum in September, 2014. We constructed a 1000 square foot tent inspired by infrastructure used in archeology expeditions and mobile disaster response scenarios. We built plinths showcasing taxidermic animal specimens, and 14 light boxes featuring photographs taken at 5 natural history museums across the eastern seaboard.

The photographs depicted museum visitors engaging with dioramas—functioning as a backdrop that reflected an anthropological perspective on museums and their exhibits. Within the photographs one sees visitors reflected in the display cases’ glass, illuminating the ways they are both within the displays and exterior to them, raising questions about the role the visitors play in nature and culture.  A free booklet essay entitled “Exhibiting the Gaze” accompanied the exhibition and explored the history of the politics of display in museum exhibitions and Worlds Fairs.

The physical exhibition was primarily a stage set for panel discussions, workshops and screenings. The programming introduced the public to the historical and theoretical framework that will informs the new museum’s future programs. Speakers included climate justice activists Gopal Dayaneni, Elizabeth Yeampierre, and Eddie Bautista, artists Hans Haacke, Mark Dion, and Liberate Tate, scientists Michael Mann and Alice Bell, authors Christian Parenti and Razmig Keucheyan, historians Fred Turner and Stuart Ewen, theorist Jodi Dean, and others.