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The Superstition Exhibition was a special exhibition put on by the New York Museum of Natural History in 1995. It was organized by Ian Cuthbert and its head curator was George Moriarty. The exhibition was staged on the main floor of the museum, in the Weisman Gallery and adjacent galleries. Margo Green consulted on some of the pharmacology exhibits, and Charlie Prine was responsible for restoring some of the artifacts displayed. The exhibition featured some dioramas by Jost Von Oster, who was responsible for many of the museum's most famous animal dioramas from the 1930s and 1940s. Its grand opening followed and became a part of the series of events known as the Museum Beast Murders.

Dr. Frock and Margo Green considered the exhibition to be in poor taste and to be sensational and exploitative. The exhibition had an overt horror theme including gothic arches, dim lighting (done by the lighting designer of the Haunted Mausoleum at Fantasyworld), and dramatic displays of human remains.

Exhibition Contents[]

This is not an exhaustive list.

  • Artifacts from the Ki tribe of Bechuanaland
  • Medicinal plants and shamanistic artifacts from the Cameroons
  • Native American religious artifacts including audio recordings of the complete Sioux Sun Dance cycle
  • Photographs of tribal shamans
  • Maori tattooed heads, preserved by smoking
  • Totem poles
  • Various animal and monster fetish carvings
  • A room with windows into various burial scenes, including a Mayan tomb, an Eskimo rock burial, and a nineteenth-century coffin with a corpse inside
  • Representations of ultimate evil, including the Eskimo demon Tornarsuk and the centerpiece of the expedition, the Kothoga Mbwun Figurine
  • A trepanned human skull on a pole
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