[Note #6] The Birth, Death and Rebirth of the Brooks Hall Woolly Mammoth

Birth: Brooks Museum curator Henry Ward gave life to the faux woolly mammoth when he purchased it from a museum preparatory lab in Germany for Brooks. Ward thought it a show-stopper, merging spectacle with science. The mammoth was shipped to Brooks and took center stage for the 1878 opening.

Death: The mammoth lived in Brooks until 1948. The Geology department, then overseeing the museum, saw no teaching value in it. The great woolly, made of plaster and Argentinian pampas grass, was reduced to rubble outside of Brooks. The Charlottesville newspaper ran an obituary headlined: “PREHISTORIC MONSTERS YIELD THEIR SPACE TO VIRGINIA STUDENTS.”

Rebirth: In 2012, art students reimagined original Brooks displays, including the mammoth, using cardboard as their medium. Shown in Ruffin Hall, this exhibit challenged the authority claimed by 19th-century naturalists, a widely shared critique.[1] After the close of the exhibit, the cardboard mammoth found its way to Brooks where you see it today.

Postscript: Research questions and museum exhibits rise and fall. In the Brooks Hall Commons, the mammoth abides.

From Professor Hantman

[1] Tom Burkhardt, studio artist in residence in 2012, oversaw the project. See https://uvamagazine.org/articles/rebuilding_history_with_cardboard_and_paint