Taxidermy in Cunningham

David Waller, assistant professor of biology, says he remembers a Kent State student sent a collection of small birds back from Korea, but the origins of most of the other specimens are unknown.

The specimens — stuffed foxes, birds, ducks, and turkeys — fill twelve glass cases in the basement of Cunningham Hall. In one case, a gray fox stares off into the distance. Down the hall, another gray fox lurks with a dead mouse in its teeth.
“It probably deserves more attention than it gets,” Waller says. While the location of the display is a mystery to most Kent State students, the origins of the stuffed animals are perhaps a bigger mystery. While the display cases do not look dilapidated, some of the specimens do not have labels next to them and some labels have fallen down.

“It’s hard to find money and time to put the display to better use,” Waller says.

Despite the fact that most of the specimens will probably never leave Cunningham Hall, Waller says he has sent some preserved birds to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History to make sure they would be cared for properly.
“The more valuable pieces we had would be better off to be preserved up there,” Waller says.

‘The Partially Buried Woodshed’

When conceptual artist Robert Smithson came to Kent State in January 1970 as a visiting artist, he decided he wanted to “do a piece” on campus, recounts emeritus art professor Brinsley Tyrrell.

“He wanted to pour mud down a hill originally and photograph it,” Tyrrell says. “We took him aside and asked, ‘Well, what else could we do?’

“He finally said he had always wanted to bury a building.”

And that’s what he did. The official media listed in constructing the artwork are “one woodshed and 20 truckloads of earth.” The building had been a mostly abandoned storage garage in a remote corner of campus. Smithson, with help from a group of art students, fulfilled his plan to bury one side of the building in dirt until the support beam cracked. And then it was art.

“We talked about what he wanted to do with the work when it was completed,” Tyrrell says. “He wanted it to just age naturally.”

When the piece was completed, it was valued at $10,000 — not that anyone could buy it.

“We had to ask for a price to justify to the university why they should preserve it.”

Several years later, based on the growing fame of the artist and the acclaim for the piece, it was valued at half a million dollars.

“There was always controversy between artists saying it was an important work and people on the campus saying it was garbage,” Tyrrell says.

The piece lasted in its slowly deteriorating state for about 14 years, until a fire and an errant snowplow, it is rumored, sped up its demise. According to Tyrrell, no one on campus realized it had collapsed for about six months.

“I find it funny that the university got this internationally known piece they didn’t know they had,” he says. “And when they lost it, they didn’t really realize it was gone.”