AMNH 
Life casts, replicated in the Museum’s studios, were sold for $12 each. 
tage of humanity should be saved at 
all costs. In short, they collected ev- 
erything they could think of. 
The life casts were shipped to the 
Museum, where sculptors fashioned 
busts with accurate hairstyles and or- 
namentation. During this period the 
Museum cast copies of the busts and 
sold them to other institutions for $12 
each. The faces were collected for 
both modelmaking and study in phys- 
ical anthropology and have been use- 
ful for Museum exhibit halls. In the 
Hall of Plains Indians, for example, 
the creased and melancholy faces of 
once-living men and women gaze im- 
perturbably out of glass exhibit cases. 
Other real faces can be seen in the 
halls of Eastern Woodland Indians, 
Northwest Coast Indians, Eskimos, 
and most recently, in the new Hall 
of Asian Peoples. 
The great Haida canoe at the 77th 
Street entrance to the Museum is pro- 
pelled by life casts of Northwest Coast 
Indians. The Norwegian-American 
sculptor Sigurd Neandross, who was 
commissioned to create the figures in 
1908, had to develop methods to cast 
larger body parts such as torsos. Since 
the weight of plaster distorts soft parts 
of the body, Neandross began by cov- 
ering a subject’s entire body with par- 
affin to create a stiff base for the 
plaster, working up from the feet to 
the head. Before applying the paraffin 
he placed threads strategically on the 
body so that when the plaster had 
barely set they could be drawn to cut 
the mold into parts. From the resultant 
pieces, Neandross cast torsos, arms, 
and legs to be assembled into figures. 
He may have cast some of the faces 
from molds that Franz Boas had made 
in British Columbia about the turn 
of the century. Casts of Northwest 
Coast clothing, masks, and ceremonial 
objects completed the figures. 
The practice of making life casts — 
often by attaching real but unauthen- 
tic bodies to authentic faces — has con- 
tinued to the present day. The Hall 
of Asian Peoples has the faces of sev- 
eral nineteenth-century Siberian Ya- 
kut; one is attached to the body cast 
of a young curatorial assistant in the 
Anthropology Department. Other fig- 
ures were made from the head and 
hands of a Buddhist monk, and as- 
sorted arms, hands, and feet of willing 
Museum staff members. 
When the South American Hall is 
built, a few molds now in storage are 
sure to be cleaned and repoured, and 
a few more faces will emerge from 
the tower attic. 
Douglas J. Preston 
Japanese Textiles 
An exhibit of Japanese textiles will 
open in Gallery 77 on June 25. Japanese 
Textile Design focuses on the designs of 
the Meiji period (the latter half of the 
nineteenth century) and includes some 
of the elaborate stencil patterns used to 
create the textiles. The appreciation of 
textile art spanned all levels of Japanese 
society, and the designs ranged from the 
creations of established workshops, pa- 
tronized by wealthy aristocrats, to folk 
art forms that developed in rural Japan. 
Among the textiles on display will be 
futons (bed covers), yutans (chest cov- 
ers), and furoshikis (textiles used for car- 
rying objects). The exhibit emphasizes 
the Japanese love of nature and includes 
compositions displaying such natural ob- 
jects as bamboo thickets, pine trees, chry- 
santhemums, peacocks, and butterflies. 
Many designs reflect Taoist and Zen Bud- 
dhist traditions. 
A Man For All Time 
A major exhibition, Shakespeare: The 
Globe & the World , opens at the Ameri- 
can Museum of Natural History on 
Thursday, June 18. The exhibition looks 
at the Elizabethan era and includes four 
copies of the first folio of Shakespeare’s 
works, other rare books and manuscripts, 
prints, paintings, engravings, and sculp- 
tures — all from the Folger Shakespeare 
Library in Washington, D.C. It is the 
first time the Folger Library has allowed 
its collection of Shakespeariana — -the 
finest in the world — to leave its halls. 
Some rare items on display are William 
Caxton’s 1498 edition of Chaucer’s Can- 
terbury Tales , the personal Bible of Eliz- 
abeth I, the 1594 quarto of Titus An- 
dronicus— the only surviving copy of 
Shakespeare’s first published play — and 
an illuminated prayer book presented to 
Henry VIII by his fourth wife, Anne of 
Cleves. Shakespeare: The Globe & the 
World also presents film and video clips 
of some modern presentations of Shake- 
speare’s plays, including Zeffirelli’s Ro- 
meo and Juliet and Kurosawa’s Throne 
of Blood {Macbeth). 
According to Thomas D. Nicholson, 
director of the Museum, “The exhibition 
presents a humanist world view that 
shaped Shakespeare’s era, a time that 
included the birth of modern science and 
the age of exploration, areas of special 
interest to the Museum.” 
Shakespeare: The Globe & the World 
will coincide with Shakespeare Summer- 
fest, a celebration of the Elizabethan age 
in performances, films, lectures, and con- 
certs in the Museum and throughout the 
New York City area. The exhibition is 
made possible by grants from the Na- 
tional Endowment for the Humanities, 
Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, 
Exxon Corporation, and the Corporation 
for Public Broadcasting. It will close Sep- 
tember 20. 
June Events 
Because of planned renovations to the 
Museum’s Auditorium, the schedule for 
June events at the Museum is not ready 
at press time. To find out about June 
events, write to the Department of Edu- 
cation, American Museum of Natural 
History, Central Park West at 79th 
Street, New York, N.Y. 10024 and re- 
quest a copy of the program brochure. 
Information about programs can also be 
obtained by calling (212) 873-7507. 
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