Anthropology and Photography at the American Museum of Natural History

On the wall, a large sign reads, “Insects and Disease.” Diagrams and graphs hang in frames on the wall, right up to the ceiling, surrounding a diorama with birds cramped above a window and soaring free outside. In the foreground on the right, there is a large glass case, filled with larger-than-life models of insects, capable of being seen from all sides. On top of the case, there is a bust of some weighty male figure, overlooking the scene.

Delving more deeply into the content of the exhibit, a curious fascination with a seemingly mundane insect emerges. Though we perceive the house fly as an indicator of when something should be cleaned, few in the U.S. today would think of flies as the bringers of fatal disease. However, the danger of typhoid fever was large in the early 20th century. The masterpiece of the exhibition was the model of the house fly, in the case in Figure 1, which was referred to in the press as “big as a cat” (NYT, 1913). Almost a year and a considerable portion of the budget was spent constructing the house fly model (Figure 2), which is displayed on a piece of bread. At least as much attention was paid by visitors and the press to the artistry of the models as to the material, just as Boas observed in his Northwest Coast Indians Hall. The bust on top of this case is of Louis Pasteur, a gift to Winslow from a French colleague (Departmental Records).

One of the diagrams hanging on the wall in the class visit photograph is of the foot of the fly (Figure 3). It depicts the claw of the fly carrying typhoid bacteria on its tip. Several charts concerning the life history of the fly use actual mounted flies, as in the graphs of “The Relation of Temperature to the Life Cycle of the House Fly” (Figure 4) and “Common Fly Breeding Substances with a Suggestion of their Relative Importance” (Figure 5). Many specimens of the insects to be modeled in the exhibit were requested for study from the Bureau of Entomology in Washington, DC (Departmental Records), and it seems that these charts may have been their fate after the models were completed.

The exhibition also utilized the ever-popular miniaturized models to illustrate the effects of diseases on people and environments. In the House-Fly Diorama (Figure 6), fly-borne diseases in both screened and unscreened tenements are shown.

The entire unscreened apartment is shown as being in complete disarray, a result unlikely caused merely by flies, and a judgmental-looking man in a top hat, much larger in scale than the woman and child inside the tenement, stands outside the scene. A poster tells visitors how they can protect against the fly through prevention of fly breeding, destructing adult flies, guarding excrement against the access of flies, and keeping flies out of houses and away from food (Figure 7).

Last, the mural with birds in the background center of the photograph is known as the “Barn Yard Group” (Figure 8). This diorama takes the exhibition past describing the natural history of the fly and detailing the conditions in unkempt city tenements to a solution. The animals featured in the diorama are “enemies of the fly,” and it encourages those with farms to let these animals abound in favor of reducing fly populations.

The photograph, along with most others documenting the public health exhibits, was taken by Kay C. Lenskjold, a junior photographer working in the museum’s Department of Public Education (Sherwood, 1920). Many of the objects included in the exhibit were also photographed by Lenskjold or her superior, and image files now contain many of these photos of internal documentation alongside copies of the images used in the exhibit and in albums that were circulated in the New York City area schools.

A Museum-published book detailing the history and status of the AMNH’s involvement with public schools of the previous year opens with a foreword by then President of the American Museum of Natural History, Henry Fairfield Osborn:

The growing museum influence, which during the past quarter of a century has been especially remarkable throughout the cities of the United States, is largely due to what may be called the New Museum Idea, namely, that the Museum is not a conservative but a progressive educational force, that it has a teaching quality or value peculiar to itself, that the Museum succeeds if it teaches, fails partially if it merely amuses or interests people and fails entirely if it simply mystifies. Sherwood,1920 p.5

This emphasis on education is particularly clear in the Halls of Public Health. A 16-page “Syllabus Guide to Public Health Exhibits” written by Laurence V. Coleman was distributed to schools and those visiting the museum to indicate to teachers and students how best to integrate the material on display at the museum into their curriculums (Am. Mus. Journal, 1913).

In addition to these pamphlets, the Department of Public Health also made travelling albums that could be sent to schools for in-school public health education and manuscripts describing the material in the exhibitions in further detail for educator use. Two pages of these albums are included here. The first (Figure 9), describes how flies can carry disease and contains pictures of the famed housefly model, as well as fly larvae in old papers and in stable manure. The second focuses more on how germs spread and how disease is prevented (Figure 10).

Included are activities one should avoid at school and instructions for making an individual drinking cup out of paper. These albums are described by Sherwood in the book detailing the Museum’s Public Education outreach:

These comprise photographs illustrating the sources, spread, and prevention of contagious diseases, the part played by insects in carrying disease, and bacteria and their work. These public health folios were prepared under the immediate direction of Professor C.-E. A. Winslow, Curator of the Museum’s Department of Public Health. They are in great demand, especially by the teachers of High Schools, and their duplication is desirable. Recently the first series of Public Health Charts, namely, “The Spread and Prevention of Communicable Diseases,” has been issued in printed form on cloth-backed paper, 22x28 inches. Now there are 250 sets of these charts available for the New York Schools, and a limited number can be sold to other educational organizations. Sherwood, 1920 p. 10

By 1921, the Museum reported that the number of students being reached by Public Education in Schools was at its highest in history (Annual Report, 1921). The circulating exhibits of the public health department had been expanded to include 20 sets about food, including models of proper portions of common food items, 8 charts in a small case, and a leaflet showing proper daily food for a child. By 1921, the Department of Public Health had realized its major goals in regards to public education outreach.

From the time the exhibition opened, its impact on community behavior was of primary concern. When the Museum held its opening of the Public Health Exhibit on April 16, 1913, it was accompanied by a public meeting in the interest of the campaign for civic cleanliness instituted by the NYC Department of Health (Am. Mus. Journal, 1913). Accordingly, addresses were given by Dr. Ernest J. Lederle (Commissioner of the NYC Dept. of Health), Mrs. Edward R. Hewitt (Womens’ Municipal League), and Prof. C.-E. A. Winslow (Curator of the exhibit and head of the Department of Public Health at the AMNH).

President Osborn’s Opening Address discusses his opinion of why there is a need for the Public Health Movement, and the Museum’s role in educating the public:

It is curious how long it takes man to treat his fellow-man as well as he treats his animals. It is true we have societies for the prevention of cruelty to children, child-beating, neglect, but there are more subtle forms of cruelty to children and to grown people as well, which are just beginning to understand and to guard against. It is cruel to bring a child into the world predestined to disease and suffering, hence eugenics. It is cruel to bring into our country the kind of people who will produce children like this, cruel, I mean, to those already here, hence the survey of immigration. It is cruel to bring up children in an unclean environment, hence this great clean city campaign. (p. 195 Am. Mus. Journal, 1913)

This attitude about who deserves health care and how best to achieve higher quality of sanitation, sadly, was not uncommon in the early 20th century, and this was far from being the only public statement Osborn made in support of eugenics and immigration restriction. Osborn, a well-known eugenicist and proponent of the evolutionary ranking of human races, was named President of the Second International Congress of Eugenics, held at the AMNH in September of 1921. Madison Grant, perhaps the most well-known scientific racist and supporter of immigration restriction as well as member of the Board-of-Trustees for the Museum, was also in attendance (Black, 2003). In his opening address for the second congress, Osborn gave this, even more explicit, mandate: “As science has enlightened government in the prevention and spread of disease, it must also enlighten government in the prevention of the spread and multiplication of worthless members of society…” (quoted in p. 237 Black, 2003).

The curator of the exhibit, however, does not appear to have shared these views. Charles-Edward Amory Winslow was a professor of Bacteriology at Yale Medical School and an acknowledged expert in the field of public health, and his definition of public health is still used widely today:

Public health is the science and the art of preventing disease, prolonging life, and organized community efforts for the sanitation of the environment, the control of communicable infections, the education of the individual in personal hygiene, the organization of medical and nursing services for the early diagnosis and preventative treatment of disease, and the development of the social machinery to ensure everyone a standard of living adequate for the maintenance of health, so organizing these benefits as to enable every citizen to realize his birthright of health and longevity. (Winslow, 1920)

In contrast to Osborn’s generally disdainful view towards the poor immigrants who were, in his mind, causing the diseases that nuisanced America’s rightful citizens, Winslow emphasized the need for public health to improve the standard of living for all.

In his address at the opening of the Public Health Exhibit in 1913, he emphasized man’s role as an animal, and his subsequent engagement with both finding nutritional food and avoidance of enemies. This first iteration of the permanent exhibition did not yet include a portion on healthy diet, but topics covered included water supply, waste disposal, bacteria, and insect-borne disease. This permanent exhibition was preceded by a smaller exhibit that was prepared for the International Congress of Hygiene and Demography (Am. Mus. Journal, 1913).

The students encountering the Insects and Disease portion of the Public Health Exhibition in 1921may not have been acutely aware of President Osborn’s contradictory views of them as students to be educated and assimilated and immigrants to be excluded, but they might have found the exhibit patronizing, with its suggestion that those who live in tenements have no concept of what it means to have a clean house. However, they might have assumed that these scenes of filth depicted how others lived, or they might have just enjoyed the chance to get out of the classroom during a school day. The Department of Public Health, Winslow said, “is the thin point at which all the departments of the Museum touch the practical daily life of man” (p. 197, Am. Mus. Journal, 1913), and these students are being observed at the interface.

Kinley Russell, NYU Anthropology

References Cited

The American Museum Journal. Volumes 13-14. American Museum of Natural History, New
York: 1913.

The Annual Report of the American Museum of Natural History. American Museum of Natural
History, New York: 1921

Black, Edwin. War against the weak : eugenics and America's campaign to create a master
race. Four Walls Eight Windows, New York: 2003.

Departmental Records: AMNH Dept. of Public Health Exhibits 1/14-12/16. AR-56. American
Museum of Natural History Archives.

Show a House Fly as Big as a Cat; Model Only One of Those to be on View at Museum’s Health
Exhibit. April 14. New York Times, New York: 1913.

Sherwood, George Herbert. Free Nature Education by the American Museum of Natural History
in Public Schools and Colleges: History and Status of Museum Instruction and its
Extension to the Schools of Greater New York and Vicinity. American Museum of
Natural History, New York: 1920.

Winslow, Charles-Edward Armory. The Untilled Fields of Public Health. Science 51(1306): 23-33
(Jan. 9, 1920)