Nightmare at the Museum

A diorama from the Akeley Hall of African Mammals at the American Museum of Natural History.

A mammals expert for the American Museum of Natural History reveals how a former president of the New York institution used its resources to advance his eugenics agenda

By Darrin Lunde

After I am gone—dead, bled, embalmed, and buried—my ghost might very well haunt the American Museum of Natural History. Like a castle, the A.M.N.H. has stood in New York for 150 years, and for 20 of those years I was a part of its illustrious history.

Because of my expertise on mammals, the museum would send me off on far-flung expeditions throughout South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia. These were real scientific expeditions where I spent months camping out in the wilderness to collect mammal specimens. Proud to be a part of this history, I set out to write a book about two of the museum’s greatest explorers: Carl Akeley and Roy Chapman Andrews. READ ON