‘Hidden Natural Histories’ Essay
‘Hidden Natural Histories’ - My journey through the work
For this project my host venue was Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery. From the beginning I knew I wanted to focus on the Natural Sciences collection, due to my love of natural history. I had imagined that I would be spending lots of time exploring and drawing the objects in the collection, but then when Coronavirus began this wasn't possible. Even as the Museum opened again, I didn't feel comfortable travelling to the museum, but they were very accommodating and we have created the entire project virtually.
Beginning the research process
Tullie House Museum collects and preserves objects and information concerning the wildlife and geology of Cumbria, holding large and important collections of zoological, botanical and geological material. The Museum also maintains a local biological records database with over 200,000 records of wildlife sightings in Cumbria. The Botany Collection alone consists of 30 collections with 24,000 specimens, the fossil collection contains around 6,000 specimens and the entomology collection has 100,000 specimens, so it was hard to know where to begin. (Find more on the museum website here.)
Reading the descriptions of the collections I noticed that several had belonged to Cumbrian women, but when I researched these names online very little further information appeared. In my recent work I have been inspired by women from the 18th century onwards who found ways to engage in scientific research, often by using art as their medium (My project Tiny Voyages Of Discovery is an example of this). This led to an interesting idea – what is in the collection, but not on display to the public?
From a discussions with Claire Sleightholm and my own research the museum website I found that it has historical links to the Carlisle Natural History Society, so I emailed them asking if they had any advice as to where I could begin my research. Almost immediately they responded with a document which outlined the biographies of several women, including:
Miss Marjory Garnett (1896-1977) and was a specialist in ornithology and marine molluscs.
Clara Winsome Muirhead (1915-1985) a botanist.
Hannah Stewart and Dorothy Blezard nee Stewart (1908-1997) Mother and daughter botanists.
Mrs Mary Jane Longstaff, (née Donald) (1855-1935) Palaeontologist who studied fossil shells.
Lady Mabel Harriet Howard CBE (1858-1942) Fossil specialist.
This information has proven to be a keystone in my entire project. Without their help I don't think I would have made some of the connections I have created my work around so I am really grateful to the group, particularly to Stephen Hewitt, but also to Frank Mawby and David Clarke for supporting my request.
So I decided to start with a very approach, simply to find out - who are the women who contributed to this collection, and what are their stories? When a lifetime of personal collections or research are donated to an institution like a museum we can assume this is because they want to pass on their knowledge and create a legacy, but with limited space in museum galleries, how can we share these legacies if the objects are not on display? Could digital interventions be a way of creating limitless spaces to tell stories?
With the support of Claire and Jay from the museum I was able to look at a variety of specimens, from the herbariums of Clara Winsome Muirhead, and Hannah and Dorothy Stewart (who became Dorothy Blezard) animal skulls collected by Marjory Garnett to fishing flies she had collected. However our access was mostly limited to the digitised collection due to the pandemic, and there were gaps in what was available, for example there were no images of the collections of Jane Donald or Lady Mabel Howard, so I turned to the internet and Ebay once more to try and find more information.
Finding physical copies of the Lakeland Natural History Society (later the Carlisle Natural History Society) transactions was exciting as they contained articles written by Dorothy Stewart and Marjory Garnett. This include 'Trees in Carlisle' by Dorothy Stewart in 1933, which seems to be the first article written by a woman. Other articles include:
- In Volume VI (1943) The Birds of Lakeland – Ernest Blezard (Editor)
Accounts of the Birds of Lakeland by Ernest Blezard, Marjory Garnett, Ritson Graham and Tom L. Johnston, 1943
- In Volume VII (1946) Lakeland Natural History
'Winter birds on Windermere, a retrospect' by Marjory Garnett
'Creeping Lady’s Tresses in Cumberland' by Dorothy Blezard
- In Volume XI (1967) Lakeland Molluscs
A preliminary list of the marine mollusc of Lakeland by Marjory Garnett and Mary M. Milne
All can be found at: http://www.carlislenats.uk/transactions-of-cnhs-contents/
Again I have to thank CNHS for how easily they have made it to access all of this information by making their archive of the transactions free and available to read online.
Developing the themes in the work
My first proposal was to create short videos that explored each of these women's stories, looking at how they navigated the barriers to access they experienced but also discussing if there were opportunities that may have been offered to them due to societal status. However as my research developed I wasn't able to find enough information about some of the key figures, and I also began to see a few different themes appear I wanted to develop:
The journey from subject to object: How and why living things become an object in a museum, the reasons behind this, and the ethical questions that arise around these topic.
Representation: Who are the figures we see commonly represented in these spaces and why? Who isn't represented? Where can we identify privileges and barriers to diversity? How can artists help to tell alternative stories or reveal hidden narratives?
Acquisition and legacy: How are objects collected, chosen by museums and what factors determine if they are displayed? Why do people donate their collections and what happens if there is not room to display these?
Contributing to this was the fact that I have been taking my daughter, who was 6 at the time, to museums before the pandemic, and this had led to discussions about who she imagined had collected the things on display. When I was her age I would have described a white, middle aged man in a pith helmet. And clearly this difference comes down to representation, because even though we know there were women working in these fields, still it was a male dominated arena and often what we see on display in natural history galleries are the achievements of men.
Issues of colonialism are also problematic in these collections, as so many are products of the Slave Trade and many of the scientists who built well known natural history collections utilised the environmental knowledge and understanding of the indigenous people without ever acknowledging their contributions.
Class privilege is another aspect that felt like it was present in the work as assistants or local guides would not be considered necessary to acknowledge, and there are therefore not recorded in the ephemera that is available to do historical research. Also, some of the women I had researched certainly faced barriers to access in regards to being able to study or work in the natural history field, but may have also have been given opportunities others were not due to their social status. This is not to undermine the great achievements of their work, but simply to acknowledge that when looking at these issues we need to take an intersectional approach and understand that there are many factors that impact why certain figures were able to break down certain barriers in history.
Finally I wanted to recognise that our relationship with nature is in a constant state of change, and ideas of conservation and ecology are relatively new to our cultural consciousness, but I still felt uncomfortable working with the fauna specimens. When we see taxidermy animals posted and mounted in a display environment it come sometimes remove us from the processes by which they were killed, collected and preserved, but there is something profoundly sad about bird skin collections which look very much like a bird you find that has been hit by a car or flown into a window with their stiff bodies and curled up claws. There are many discussions within the natural sciences about the need for physical specimens for identification and other factors, but as an artist who is concerned with the preservation and protection of the natural world I feel uncomfortable about these objects and the message they can communicate about human domination and objectification of nature.
I didn't feel very confident addressing any of these points, so my mentor Hwa Young recommended that I allow myself some time to study and learn more about these topics, and to give myself space to work out how I wanted to approach them. I did this through reading blogs and articles, through accessing book extracts, and through lots of conversations with the people around me around what I felt I was informed and able to explore in my work.
From this I began to create and collect material that I could incorporate into video - drawing plants that were in the herbarium collections and animating them, but also searching for them in nature to film real specimens. I found books on Ebay on botany (some from the viewpoint of how women engaged with the botanical sciences), on taxidermy processes and on Lakeland nature with the intention of incorporating these into the work. Claire from Tullie House also sent me through images of the Natural History stores, some images of the bird skin collection, and images of the towers of lovely wooden boxes built by past curator Ernest Blezard to house the collections. From these I decided to create paper sculptures which would ‘bring the specimens to life’ but also be exhibited alongside tools and materials that would have been used in their collection and presentation. To connect to this I filmed myself making a Green Hellebore paper sculpture, as it seemed to reflect the process of preparing a botanical specimen for a herbarium.
The final part of the work will the be display of the work in the gallery in July and for ‘Every object is a future’ I intend the work to be visitor responses and images of the work created in the workshops I’ll be running - as the future of these objects is in part held in those who experience them and build them into their own story.