Intertexts

JntertexTs, vol. 1» no. 2, Fall 1997 Inner Anxiety and Outward Exploration: The American Museum of Natural History and the Central Asiatic Expeditions Ronald Rainger T e x a s T e c h U n i v e r s i t y In the 1920s and 1930s, New York’s American Museum of Natural History initiated some of the most extensive and highly publicized explo¬ rations of the early twentieth century. Promoted largely by the institution’s president, Henry Fairfield Osborn, the museum sent scientists, explorers and wealthy business associates to “the ends of the earth” to record information and return with specimen collections for the vast repository on Central Park West.^ During the 1920s and 1930s, the museum sponsored Lincoln Ellsworth’s bid to be the first to fly over the North Pole (Amund¬ sen), Carl Akeley’s expeditions for elephants which he would later display in the museum’s Theodore Roosevelt Memorial (Akelcy; Haraway 26-58), and William ICing Gregory’s efforts to capture gorillas in the Congo (Gregory and Raven). Through the museum’s use of “incessant and nationwide publicity” (Wissler, 203), the public avidly followed the exploits of these and other explorers (Perkins). Among the museum’s most famous endeavors were the Central Asiatic Expeditions of the 1920s. Conceived and led by the museum scientist Roy Chapman Andrews, these were aseries of eight explorations between 1922 and 1930 to the Gobi Desert of Mongolia for the purpose of discovering the “missing link.” The expeditions received extensive coverage in peri¬ odicals and the popular press. In addition, Andrews was idealized as an intrepid explorer, adashing, fearless young gentleman pursuing adaring adventure in aremote, mysterious region of the world. Andrews reinforced that image through radio presentations, his popular book. On the Trail of Ancient Man^ and anumber of autobiographical accounts (Andrews, Ends of the Earth-, Lafollette 55, 57-58). Yet Andrews’s expeditions and personal ambitions embodied more than an interest in adventurous fieldwork and specimen collection. The Central Asiatic Expeditions as well as the museum’s other efforts were the product of aparticular culture. They reflected the ideas and objectives of an early twentieth-century New York elite of politicians, businessmen, scientists, and sportsmen who had close associations with the American Museum of Natural History. For those individuals’ expeditions to the Arctic, Central Africa or Asia constituted scientific analogues to America’s expanding 1 7 7 1 7 8 I N T E R T E X T S political and economic power. The museum’s expeditions were also ameans for preserving traditional ideals and values, for sustaining the power and prestige of aparticular class and ethnic group in asociety that was becoming increasingly urban, technological and pluralistic. As articulated by Osborn and actualized by Andrews, the museum’s outward ventures were an effort to quell inner anxieties among the museum’s and the nation’s elites. Those concerns and objectives reflected the museum’s social structure. By the early twentieth century, the American Museum was one of the largest institutions of its kind in the world. Although apublic museum, its trustees and administration were dominated by such powerful figures as the financier J.P. Morgan, the politician Joseph Choate, and railroad presidents E. H. Harriman and Cornelius Vanderbilt. Those individuals were not interested in science per se; rather the museum reflected their civic, philanthropic, and proprietary interests. As devout Protestants of Scottish and English heri¬ tage, these were men who had created the YMCA and served on the board of the Society for the Suppression of Vice. They helped establish the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New York Public Librar>^ and other major civic cultural institutions (Satterlee; Mercer; Rainger 54-56). Originally the American Museum did not embody any specific policies or objectives, but given its leaders’ religious interests and concern for social welfare and social control, it was to serve as aplace where the urban masses could participate in an acceptable form of entertainment and could learn of nature’s bounty andmagnificence(Green). By the early twentieth century the museum’s leaders were emphasizing an additional theme: the presen'ation of the country’s flora, fauna...