1997/03/01 by Richard Ellis · 4 citations
Arts and Humanities · #Museums and Cultural Heritage
paper · doi:10.1111/j.2151-6952.1997.tb01120.x
openalex publication_date 1997/03/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
ABSTRACT Models of the giant squid ( Architeuthis spp.) are probably unique in natural history exhibition: they are representations of a giant living animal that has never been seen in a healthy state by a human being. Since its discovery in the mid‐nineteenth century, the giant squid has remained one of the world's great zoological mysteries. In the attempt to introduce this fabulous creature, museums around the world have resorted to life‐sized models. Yale teuthologist A.E. Verrill was responsible for the first such models in 1882; then Ward's Natural Science Establishment in Rochester, New York, manufactured and sold them. In this century, various museums (and one zoo) have made their own models of these ten‐armed monsters of the deep. Their disparate attempts to re‐create Architeuthis for the museum public represent one of the most intriguing case histories in the annals of museum exhibition.