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Making Nature

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Photograph of a young woman exploring the exhibition, Making Nature, at Wellcome Collection.
Making Nature exhibition, Michael Bowles. Source: Wellcome Collection. Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0).

This exhibition examined what we think, feel and value about other species and what this means for the world around us.

It brought together more than 100 objects from literature, film, taxidermy and photography to reveal the hierarchies in our view of the natural world and how these influence our actions (or inaction) towards the planet. Organised around four themes – Ordering, Displaying, Observing and Making – the exhibition questioned the approach of ‘learning through looking’, charted the changing fashions of museum displays alongside society’s changing attitudes to the natural world, examined the search for an authentic encounter with nature, and considered how humans have intentionally altered other organisms.