An Illustrated Lecture with Dr. Pat Morris, co-author of “Walter Potter’s Curious World of Taxidermy”
Date: Monday, November 17th
Time:8pm
Admission: $8 ( Tickets Here )
Location: Morbid Anatomy Museum, 424 Third Avenue, 11215 Brooklyn.

***Copies of Dr. Pat Morris’s books will be on sale at the event.

Walter Potter became famous for his whimsical ‘anthropomorphic’ groups of animals, set up to resemble humans at school, the tea table, the gentleman’s club and getting married. During his lifetime his taxidermy delighted children and grown-ups alike, and continues to amuse and challenge us even today despite the dissolution of his unique museum in Sussex. Charles Waterton, a generation earlier, was a famous traveller who had his portrait painted by Charles Willson Peale in Philadelphia on one of his visits to South America. Taxidermy was his delight and passion. He developed his own pioneering methods which nobody else copied.

Unlike the genial Walter Potter, Waterton’s principal delight lay in creating vicious taxidermical cartoons, wickedly mocking the Establishment and religious leaders. He was particularly hostile about the Reformation which had so severely crippled the fortunes of Catholics in Europe. His taxidermy effigies of Martin Luther and the ‘Nondescript’ (perhaps the most notorious item of taxidermy ever) and his highly opinionated essays and books made Waterton a larger than life 19th interest today. century character who continues to excite interest today

His book ‘Wanderings in South America’ is still in print nearly 200 years after it was written, but his taxidermy remains tucked away in northern England. This lecture will reveal the secrets of how he managed to create some of his unique specimens.

Dr Pat Morris was Senior Lecturer in Zoology at Royal Holloway, University of London until taking early retirement in 2002. There he taught generations of students, many of whom have worked in biology and conservation as a result. He is best known for his studies on hedgehogs, over the last 50 years. He has also led studies of water voles, bats, edible dormice and red squirrels. He managed a major research and conservation programme on hazel dormice for ‘English Nature’, the British Government’s former wildlife conservation agency. This ‘species­led’ approach resulted in significantly advancing our knowledge of this previously elusive animal and establishing the national Dormouse Monitoring Programme (the first for a terrestrial British mammal), and major advances in raising public awareness of important conservation issues. He served on a Government enquiry into bovine TB and three formal evaluations of Government funded research on wildlife problems. He is a past Chairman of the Mammal Society and holder of its Silver Medal. He was for 15 years a Council Member of the National Trust and (for 6 years) Chairman of its Nature Conservation Advisory Panel. He was a Vice President of the London Wildlife Trust, and is a member of two other county wildlife trusts, the RSPB, various other Natural History and conservation organisations, and Honorary Life Member of the Guild of Taxidermists. For three years he was a co­Director of the International Summer School on the Breeding and Conservation of Endangered species, based at Jersey Zoo. In September 2000 he was appointed President of the British Hedgehog Preservation Society and is a key scientific advisor to the Peoples Trust for Endangered Species. He has been a Council Member of the Linnean Society of London since 2012.