ABSTRACT
The idea of nature as spectacle was crucial to the Victorian museum enterprise and its capacity to maintain and attract existing and new audiences. This chapter analyses the origins of photographs and other visual representations of the moa, their significance in promoting colonial natural history to metropolitan and local audiences and the ways in which they helped build the reputations of museums as well as individuals within the global scientific community. Photographs of the Christchurch moa displays taken by Daniel Mundy and Dr. Alfred Barker were part of the continual flow of exchanges that went on between individuals located at the centre and periphery of Victorian science. A handful of moa bones, which had been discovered at Glenmark previously, had found their way to the Madras Museum and were brought to the attention of the Illustrated London News. Various museum trustees, businessmen and other Canterbury settlers contributed to the publicity by way of their own contacts and skills.
