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Oregon, United States
loves: you win if you guessed "pets" and "museums". Also books, art history, travel, British punk, Korean kimchi, bindis, martinis, and other things TBD. I will always make it very clear if a post is sponsored in any way. Drop me a line at thepetmuseum AT gmail.com !

Monday, July 01, 2013

a dog and his master teach anthropology

A few years back at the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History, the anthropologist Grover Krantz and his wolfhound Clyde got to work on a special exhibit together.  They taught visitors a great deal about the uses and purposes of anthropology, and Krantz didn't have to say a thing.  
Not that he could.  He and Clyde were years dead by then.  Their skeletons, mounted in a hug copied from a personal snapshot, were the concluding exhibit for "Written in Bone:  Forensic Files of the 17th-c Chesapeake."  I find this such a life-affirming way to face your mortal end.
Big thanks to my dear Janet F for this wonderful find - now I'll send you to the article and photo.  

2 comments:

parlance said...

Oh yes! That article and the photo are just great. For some reason it acts as an antidote to the thing I always wish I had not seen at a Pompeii exhibition - the cast of the chained dog dying in agony. Every time that pops into my mind - as horrible images will sometimes - I will think of these two sets of lovingly entwined bones.

curator said...

Parlance - exactly! Did you get a chance to read the related article to which the Smithsonian blog linked? Turns out Grover owed lots more to Clyde than we guess - even wrote a book about him, "Only a Dog." The deeper you get into this story, the more wonderful it gets.