Interview 15695 – Caption Index: 185
Yes, I did. I selected them, obviously the general curator had to approve, they had the final signature on it but the interview process, all the curators did their own interviewing. Read More
Yes, I did. I selected them, obviously the general curator had to approve, they had the final signature on it but the interview process, all the curators did their own interviewing. Read More
So, you were trying to instill or were you, a new culture in your section?… Read More
And I still keep in touch with two or three of that crew. We’ve all gotten old together but nevertheless, I keep in touch with them. Read More
So, you had the responsibility of hiring your own people?… Read More
You just couldn’t just think it’s gonna take care of itself. You had to water it, you had to had to feed it. You had to take care of it. And so, that was something new to me. I never had to really think about that until that new building… Read More
I was looking at the health and welfare of the bird, are you looking good today?… Read More
Because many times with a bird, when this starts looking bad, it can get bad real quick. So, just looking at the health and welfare of the collection, make sure that everybody’s looking good, talking to the keepers, “How’s this doing?” “How’s that doing?” I was a real task master… Read More
Management philosophy. Yes, the first thing I did was obviously, I went around to look at the collection and I was looking at a lot of things. Read More
How were you interacting with your employees in your division?… Read More
What was your management philosophy?… Read More
Did you have to go out in the field to do any of this or not?… Read More
No. No, I didn’t do any expeditions at St. Louis in terms of field collecting. During this time that you’re the curator of birds, you were making daily rounds of your collection all the time. Read More
Birds weren’t hard to get at that time, they’ve become more difficult. Some of these were captive raised. Some of them were imported from dealers under special permits. I think it’s harder to do things today than it certainly was then. You’ve got the quarantine issues that are more stringent. Read More
Were these animals, were these birds difficult to acquire for the exhibit or how did you acquire them?… Read More
How are we going to put trees and all of the artifacts in there that we need to have to tell the story and then we wanna make sure that we have this proper specimens to what we’re trying to do. It was interesting that when you came into the… Read More
But in the mixed aviary exhibits, we tried to tell a story ’cause it was more of an educational benefit than trying to identify every little bird in the exhibit. And you couldn’t keep up with it. You mentioned some unusual birds. Read More
So, a lot of thought had to go toward what’s this space really gonna be best for?… Read More
How are we going to design it?… Read More
If we were having a cock-of-the-rock exhibit, it’s gonna look like a tropical exhibit with a cocks-of-the-rock in it, we had to make sure that we were gonna have cocks-of-the-rocks. If we were going to have a small exhibit that is going to tell the story of toucans or something… Read More
And with this new exhibit, you had to bring in new birds, new specimens for this?… Read More