Center for PostNatural History
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| Location | 4913 Penn Avenue Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15224 |
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| Coordinates | 40°27′55″N 79°56′41″W / 40.465357°N 79.944669°W |
| Founder | Richard Pell |
| Website | http://www.postnatural.org/ |
The Center for PostNatural History is a storefront museum in Pittsburgh's Garfield neighborhood. In contrast to typical natural history museums, it is focused on the collection and exposition of organisms that have been intentionally and heritably altered by humans by means including selective breeding or genetic engineering, a phenomenon referred to as the postnatural. The Center is "dedicated to the advancement of knowledge relating to the complex interplay between culture, nature, and biotechnology", whose mission is "to acquire, interpret, and provide access to a collection of living, preserved, and documented organisms of postnatural origin".
It was founded by Richard Pell, an associate professor of Electronic and Time-based Arts at Carnegie Mellon University.
Displays have included glowing fish (with genes from bioluminescent jellyfish and coral), 'Biosteel' goats that grow spider silk proteins in their milk,transgenic fruit flies and a Silkie chicken, bred through the continuation of a recessive gene for its fluffy, fur-like coat.
Exhibits are narrated via wired telephone handset. A range of formats are used including photography, taxidermy and dioramas, and living exhibits. In addition, the Center has an extensive online archive detailing past and current exhibitions, specimens, archives, events and press releases. Details of past exhibitions include notably those of the Cold Coast Archive, a collection of artefacts and seeds from the Svalbard Global Seed Vault collected by researchers and artists Signe Lidén, Annesofie Norn, and Steve Rowell which was displayed at the Center in 2012; Atomic Age Rodents, an archive of rodents from the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History which had been used in some form or another in atomic testing in the early to mid-20th Century; and PostNatural Nature, produced in collaboration with the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin documenting different instances of the postnatural in everyday organisms.
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