I went on a class trip to the Royal Ontario Museum today. We were apparently supposed to be looking at the Greek and Egyptian exhibits. I skipped out to go see the dinosaurs and to find some old friends: the stuffed animals.
I used to come to the museum when I was about ten years old and sit on those gross canvas stools for hours sketching the various taxidermy’d mammals and birds. I was bad. You can see in the drawing on the top is from 2002. I knew nothing of art or anatomy or mediums; I’m pretty sure I spent two hours and used a mechanical pencil on it.
But I still knew the route by heart, up the stairs to the second floor, over the staircase, past the dinosaurs, and past the hanging birds… But I found only one familiar face. The little tiger, encased in glass, not where he should be, but stuffed in the back corner of the kids’ playpen. It made me sad. There was no trace of the lions, or the foxes, or the panda… Well they weren’t where they used to be at least.
Out of respect, I started to sketch my old friend, but as I did, I sunk deeper into sadness. Here was a tiger, cut down in its prime, stuffed and mounted for people to gawk at. The joy I used to feel when looking at these animals was replaced with a sickening guilt that I was looking at a dead stuffed puppet.
What made it worse was that everyone did the same thing when passing him:
The women would cock their heads and comment on how majestic he looked; how beautiful he was. The men contemplated an encounter with such a beast and began discussing various methods of defence, most idiotic. The children would gawk and press their noses against the glass. One would always say that he was smaller than he thought he would be. Then they would take a blurry picture and leave.
For thirty minutes I stood there sketching. For thirty minutes I saw what this tiger saw everyday, I heard what he heard through muted glass.
It made me sick.
That tiger was dead. He couldn’t move. He wasn’t majestic. He couldn’t attack. He held no wonder for me. He was a stuffed and mounted tiger in the middle of a museum.
The sketch on the bottom is my best depiction of him I could get out before the incessant screeching sent me reeling down into the bowels of the art deco exhibit.
I guess 2009 is the year the ROM lost its appeal to me.
I’m glad I have my pass for the Toronto Zoo.