Carl Ethan Akeley
| Carl Akeley | |
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Carl Akeley
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| Born | May 19, 1864 Clarendon, New York, US |
| Died | November 18, 1926 (aged 62) Mt. Mikeno, Belgian Congo |
| Fields | Taxidermy |
| Institutions | Milwaukee Public Museum, Field Museum of Natural History, American Museum of Natural History, the Smithsonian Institution |
| Notable awards | John Scott Medal (1916) |
| Spouses | Delia Akeley, Mary Jobe Akeley |
Carl Ethan Akeley (May 19, 1864 – November 18, 1926) was a pioneering American taxidermist, sculptor, biologist, conservationist, inventor, and nature photographer, noted for his contributions to American museums, most notably to the Field Museum of Natural History and the American Museum of Natural History. He is considered the father of modern taxidermy. He was the founder of the AMNH Exhibitions Lab, the interdisciplinary department that fuses scientific research with immersive design.
He was born in Clarendon, New York, and grew up on a farm, attending school for only three years. He learned taxidermy from David Bruce in Brockport, New York, and then entered an apprenticeship in taxidermy at Ward's Natural Science Establishment in Rochester, New York. While at Ward's Carl Akeley also helped mount P.T. Barnum's Jumbo after the latter was killed in a railroad accident.
In 1886 Akeley moved on to the Milwaukee Public Museum (MPM) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Akeley remained in Milwaukee for six years, refining "model" techniques used in taxidermy. At the Milwaukee Public Museum, his early work consisted of animals found in Wisconsin prairies and woodlands. One of these was a diorama of a muskrat group, which is sometimes referred to as the first museum diorama; however, such dioramas, and dioramas depicting "habitat groups," dated back well into the early 1800s, and were quite popular with taxidermists in Victorian England. He also created historical reindeer and orangutan exhibits. Akeley left the Milwaukee Public Museum in 1892 and set up a private studio from which he continued to do contract work, including three mustangs for the Smithsonian Institution for exhibition at the World's Columbian Exposition. In 1896 he joined the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, where he developed his innovative taxidermy techniques, notably the creation of lightweight, hollow, but sturdy mannequins on which to mount the animals' skins. He was also a prolific inventor, perfecting a "cement gun" to repair the crumbling facade of the Field Columbian Museum in Chicago (the old Palace of Fine Arts from the World's Columbian Exposition. He is today known as the inventor of shotcrete, or "gunite" as he termed it at the time. Akeley did not use sprayable concrete in his taxidermy work, as is sometimes suggested. Akeley also invented a highly mobile motion picture camera for capturing wildlife, started a company to manufacture it, and patented it in 1915. The Akeley "pancake" camera (so-called because it was round) was soon adopted by the War Department for use in World War I, primarily for aerial use, and later by newsreel companies, and Hollywood studios, primarily for aerial footage and action scenes. F. Trubee Davison covered these and other Akeley inventions in a special issue of Natural History magazine.
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