Life after death: the Gorilla Family of the Senckenberg Museum (Frankfurt/Main)

This essay examines the history of the gorilla family placed on display at the Senckenberg Museum in Frankfurt am Main, Germany in 1907. It considers, first, how it came to be; second, what it signified both at the time - the museal domestication of an ape previously considered to be a terrifying foe and a monstrous possible ancestor - and third, what it meant ninety years later, when I sought out its history and found more than I bargained for.