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CNN Saturday Morning News
Interview with Paul Rhymer, Christian Samper
Aired November 15, 2003 - 09:21 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
HEIDI COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: All right, well, the bear is there, and so is the boar. A new exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington is looking a little bit like a jungle. It has all of the right stuff, though.
Here to fill us in, our taxidermist, Paul Rhymer, and one of the exhibit's developers. And Christian Samper. He is the director of the National Museum of Natural History.
Thanks so much to the both of you for being with us this morning. An exciting day. What kind of an undertaking was this, Christian?
CHRISTIAN SAMPER, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY: Oh, well, good morning. This is a great morning for us. In about an hour, we'll be opening the largest renovation that's been done at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History since 1910. We have a spectacular hall with 274 mammals, and it should be fun for families, for kids, and for everyone to come and see and enjoy.
COLLINS: What do you hope people will take away from this exhibit?
SAMPER: Well, it's a big message about mammals, and we are mammals, of course, and all our relatives. We'll come here and see hippos, you can come here and see rodents and other kinds of creatures. And all we're going to learn from this is that all of these different forms come from what I have in my hand, which you'll see in a moment, which is the ancestral mammal, Morgi (ph).
COLLINS: We are actually getting a look right now at some incredible taxidermy work, who I know we have -- that's what we have our other guest with us, Paul Rhymer, who is, as I said, a taxidermist. Want to ask you quickly -- Oh, now we're looking at the -- OK, tell us again, Christian, what is the red in your hand?
SAMPER: Well, come and meet Morgi. Morgi is about 210 million years old. It's been reconstructed from some of the fossils. And every mammal that you see in this hall comes from Morgi. And people coming here will be able to learn everything about it. So this is one of our relatives.
COLLINS: Wow, that's interesting. And I certainly did not know that. Do want to move on to the taxidermy. Just beautiful that we were seeing behind you there. Paul, tell us a little about that. What sort of work was this? PAUL RHYMER, TAXIDERMIST: Well, these animals are all assembled by a team of taxidermists here at the Smithsonian. And each of the forms, as you see here, the animals are put on very specialized, custom-made forms that our exhibit and design team put together. So the taxidermists would put together a form for each animal to help describe the story.
This, as you're seeing here, is an African water hole. And we've got different animals coming to drink. Some, one of the zebras, is, you know, in a position looking for predators.
And so all these things were specifically sculpted to actually tell the story that we have here.
COLLINS: I understand there's a pretty interesting story about a rhino and a panda.
RHYMER: Yes. We -- some of the animals we were able to use from the old mammal hall, and back in another part of the exhibit, there's a rhino that was collected by Theodore Roosevelt back in the early part of the 20th century. And that was -- it's actually a beautiful, beautifully mounted animal. And we just had to do a little cleanup and some minor repairs.
We also, from the very old hall, we have an old panda mount that over the years had faded with, you know, exhibit lights, and the white part had yellowed. So we used sort of modern-day hair-coloring products and hair-bleach products to...
COLLINS: Really?
RHYMER: ... to bring it back to life. Yes. We used the dye to sort of make the black nice and rich and dark. And we used some hair bleach to whiten it and make them nice and fresh. Sort of recycle them.
COLLINS: Now, is this normal procedure?
RHYMER: A lot of this stuff is pretty -- we've had to invent a lot of stuff. And in -- but then there's a lot of stuff that's being used in the commercial taxidermy trade. So we, you know, as a team of taxidermists, we would come in together, put our heads together, and figure out what is the, you know, the best way to approach a problem, maybe come up with new ideas or use old ones.
It was a great process to try to figure out how to use the old and the new.
COLLINS: Wow. I bet it was one of the neatest projects you've ever worked on, I'm just guessing. It looks just absolutely beautiful.
I do want to ask you a little bit, if I could, Christian, about some interactive portions of the exhibit. People really get to touch these animals, or what happens? SAMPER: You -- well, the animals are behind glass cases, but we have made all kinds of displays, we have images, we've got wonderful things. And we have sound. We actually have different -- 40 different sound channels in various parts of the hall, so you don't only see a giraffe, you can actually hear a giraffe as it's eating leaves off a big acacia tree.
And you can have a thunderstorm and other kinds -- all kinds of wonderful effects. We think we expect to see the kids crawling here this morning in just under an hour. It should be good.
COLLINS: Very exciting.
SAMPER: So we hope everyone, we hope everyone can come to this family reunion today.
COLLINS: How long does it take to walk through, guys? Just wondering about an idea for how little children can come along. Sometimes it's difficult to keep the attention of a, you know, 2-year- old.
SAMPER: Well, it should be a really good morning. We are going to be offering the first 1,000 people coming in here some treats, and it should be lots of fun.
COLLINS: All right. Wonderful, guys. We thank you so very much for showing us just a bit of it. It looks like a beautiful exhibit. And we appreciate you showing it to us. Wow. I'm ready to go. Paul Rhymer, taxidermist, and Christian Samper, the director of the National Museum of Natural History. All right.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired November 15, 2003 - 09:21 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
HEIDI COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: All right, well, the bear is there, and so is the boar. A new exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington is looking a little bit like a jungle. It has all of the right stuff, though.
Here to fill us in, our taxidermist, Paul Rhymer, and one of the exhibit's developers. And Christian Samper. He is the director of the National Museum of Natural History.
Thanks so much to the both of you for being with us this morning. An exciting day. What kind of an undertaking was this, Christian?
CHRISTIAN SAMPER, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY: Oh, well, good morning. This is a great morning for us. In about an hour, we'll be opening the largest renovation that's been done at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History since 1910. We have a spectacular hall with 274 mammals, and it should be fun for families, for kids, and for everyone to come and see and enjoy.
COLLINS: What do you hope people will take away from this exhibit?
SAMPER: Well, it's a big message about mammals, and we are mammals, of course, and all our relatives. We'll come here and see hippos, you can come here and see rodents and other kinds of creatures. And all we're going to learn from this is that all of these different forms come from what I have in my hand, which you'll see in a moment, which is the ancestral mammal, Morgi (ph).
COLLINS: We are actually getting a look right now at some incredible taxidermy work, who I know we have -- that's what we have our other guest with us, Paul Rhymer, who is, as I said, a taxidermist. Want to ask you quickly -- Oh, now we're looking at the -- OK, tell us again, Christian, what is the red in your hand?
SAMPER: Well, come and meet Morgi. Morgi is about 210 million years old. It's been reconstructed from some of the fossils. And every mammal that you see in this hall comes from Morgi. And people coming here will be able to learn everything about it. So this is one of our relatives.
COLLINS: Wow, that's interesting. And I certainly did not know that. Do want to move on to the taxidermy. Just beautiful that we were seeing behind you there. Paul, tell us a little about that. What sort of work was this? PAUL RHYMER, TAXIDERMIST: Well, these animals are all assembled by a team of taxidermists here at the Smithsonian. And each of the forms, as you see here, the animals are put on very specialized, custom-made forms that our exhibit and design team put together. So the taxidermists would put together a form for each animal to help describe the story.
This, as you're seeing here, is an African water hole. And we've got different animals coming to drink. Some, one of the zebras, is, you know, in a position looking for predators.
And so all these things were specifically sculpted to actually tell the story that we have here.
COLLINS: I understand there's a pretty interesting story about a rhino and a panda.
RHYMER: Yes. We -- some of the animals we were able to use from the old mammal hall, and back in another part of the exhibit, there's a rhino that was collected by Theodore Roosevelt back in the early part of the 20th century. And that was -- it's actually a beautiful, beautifully mounted animal. And we just had to do a little cleanup and some minor repairs.
We also, from the very old hall, we have an old panda mount that over the years had faded with, you know, exhibit lights, and the white part had yellowed. So we used sort of modern-day hair-coloring products and hair-bleach products to...
COLLINS: Really?
RHYMER: ... to bring it back to life. Yes. We used the dye to sort of make the black nice and rich and dark. And we used some hair bleach to whiten it and make them nice and fresh. Sort of recycle them.
COLLINS: Now, is this normal procedure?
RHYMER: A lot of this stuff is pretty -- we've had to invent a lot of stuff. And in -- but then there's a lot of stuff that's being used in the commercial taxidermy trade. So we, you know, as a team of taxidermists, we would come in together, put our heads together, and figure out what is the, you know, the best way to approach a problem, maybe come up with new ideas or use old ones.
It was a great process to try to figure out how to use the old and the new.
COLLINS: Wow. I bet it was one of the neatest projects you've ever worked on, I'm just guessing. It looks just absolutely beautiful.
I do want to ask you a little bit, if I could, Christian, about some interactive portions of the exhibit. People really get to touch these animals, or what happens? SAMPER: You -- well, the animals are behind glass cases, but we have made all kinds of displays, we have images, we've got wonderful things. And we have sound. We actually have different -- 40 different sound channels in various parts of the hall, so you don't only see a giraffe, you can actually hear a giraffe as it's eating leaves off a big acacia tree.
And you can have a thunderstorm and other kinds -- all kinds of wonderful effects. We think we expect to see the kids crawling here this morning in just under an hour. It should be good.
COLLINS: Very exciting.
SAMPER: So we hope everyone, we hope everyone can come to this family reunion today.
COLLINS: How long does it take to walk through, guys? Just wondering about an idea for how little children can come along. Sometimes it's difficult to keep the attention of a, you know, 2-year- old.
SAMPER: Well, it should be a really good morning. We are going to be offering the first 1,000 people coming in here some treats, and it should be lots of fun.
COLLINS: All right. Wonderful, guys. We thank you so very much for showing us just a bit of it. It looks like a beautiful exhibit. And we appreciate you showing it to us. Wow. I'm ready to go. Paul Rhymer, taxidermist, and Christian Samper, the director of the National Museum of Natural History. All right.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
