Tim Bovard Keeps 100-Year-Old Animal Mounts Alive as America's Last Full-Time Museum Taxidermist
Updated
Updated · The New York Times · May 12
Tim Bovard Keeps 100-Year-Old Animal Mounts Alive as America's Last Full-Time Museum Taxidermist
1 articles · Updated · The New York Times · May 12
72-year-old Tim Bovard still commutes before dawn to Los Angeles’s Natural History Museum, where he maintains century-old animal mounts, refreshes dioramas and helps design new exhibits.
Bovard is the last full-time taxidermist working at any U.S. museum, a role he has held at the museum since 1984 as institutions increasingly rely on outside specialists or part-time work.
His path began at 11 with a roadkill skunk and grew through years of raising abandoned birds, tanning leather and apprenticing with a local taxidermist while still in high school.
That unusual career now makes Bovard a rare bridge between scientific collection care and public display, preserving specimens that give dead animals a second life for museum visitors.
What happens to America's priceless animal collections when the last full-time museum taxidermist finally retires?
With in-house artisans vanishing, must museums now outsource the creation of their iconic natural exhibits?
In an age of AI and VR, is the meticulous craft of taxidermy an art form worth saving?