Tea with Jane Wildgoose

On a rainy midsummer’s day off from work I head to north London, where on the W7 bus from Finsbury Park to Crouch End Broadway I mull over what I have signed up to. I am heading to an appointment at the Wildgoose Memorial Library, described by the website as “an ongoing accumulation of reference material that informs Jane Wildgoose’s work as an artist and writer. It is a constantly evolving work in progress: a place for meditation and consultation on universal themes of life and death.” Now I am fairly new to this non-scientific approach to examining the natural world, but like me Jane has a strong interest in curiosities and taxidermy. So it is with this in mind that I opened the wooden gate, pushed my way through the curtain of ivy, climbed the cast iron stairs and knocked on the door. 

As soon as the door opened, I let out a mental sigh of relief at the sight of a taxidermy cat umbrella stand, and a Jose Guadalupe Posada on the wall. Jane ushered me into her home where she has lived since 1981 and into the “library”, before taking my coat and setting about preparing a pot of tea. I was left to examine the fascinating displays on the shelves and in the cabinets surrounding the room. Stuffed Crows and Humming birds, along with more obscure objects such as an armadillo handbag and two dried out puffer-fish were joined by a collection of skulls. Before I could get much of a closer look Jane arrived with the tea and we began to discuss her collection and her works. Jane began as a costume and textile designer, but her desire to reflect history and context when preparing a piece of work often led her on long periods of research, resulting in projects of enormous scope. 

One such project was an installation consisting of a cabinet of Zoological curiosities and artefacts for the Yale Centre for British Art. Here, Jane assembled a piece to represent a now scattered collection of objects gathered by the Duchess of Portland throughout the 1700s. In this piece, Jane worked with the staff and collections at the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University to source a range of shells, corals, insects, and fossils, based on those described in over 4,000 lots in the catalogue of the Duchess's collections published to accompany their sale following her death in 1786. Over a long collaboration working closely with the collections at the Peabody, Jane invited Senior Collection Managers Eric Lazo-Wasem (Invertebrate Zoology), Ray Pupedis (Entomology) and Susan Butts (Invertebrate Paleontology) to arrange specimens in meticulous detail to demonstrate an "evolution" of methods for displaying specimens.

As such, the team present the exhibit in numerous ways, ranging from the decorative styles of the 18th century, to the methodological approach used in museums today based on the classification system of Linnaeus. Carl Linnaeus’ Systema Naturæ was the first scientific attempt to classify life on earth by arranging organisms according to their physiological appearance. Whilst advances in evolutionary theory and genetics have led to drastic changes, the scientific community continue to use it to classify all of life on earth, in particular when displaying items of natural history. His ideas were just emerging at the time of the Duchess's collection, and she even hired Linnaeus's favourite pupil, Daniel Solander, to catalogue her massive collection of shells.

Rather than attempting to create a carbon copy of the original collection, Jane's work re-interpreted the contexts in which natural history specimens have been collected and displayed: exploring the relationship of the Duchess with her great friend Mary Delany, the poems of Erasmus Darwin (whose grandson went on to shake up the world), and the arrangement of items of natural history. In doing so, Jane questions the superiority of scientific presentation, arguing that an artistic approach with equal weight in terms of contextual research can be just as powerful.

 

And here we came to the crux of my visit, when Jane reverted the questions to me. Why had I chosen to come and speak with her? For the first time, I asked myself the same question. “I am looking for a new way to engage society with their innate connection with nature. I believe that the current methods employed by many natural history museums and other institutions fail to galvanise activism with regards to the loss of biodiversity.” I went on to ask for her advice. How would she use say a stuffed Gorilla to communicate the true plight of the Great apes? She replied that I would have to answer this by myself before leading by example and with conviction. She then apologised for sounding patronising, but I was already deep in thought. 

After discussing other topics (such as why taxidermy is of such fascination given its macabre nature), I excused myself and Jane led me to the door. Back on the W7, I repeated the encounter on some scraps of paper, noting that the meeting with Jane and her fascinating collection had left me with more questions than I had arrived with, but also with a broad grin on my face.