ABSTRACT
Work within both public history and heritage studies has tended to overlook the lives of non-human animals. In some respects, particularly within Animal Studies, academics have started to remember the role of certain animals living in the past. British sculpture, like some Australian work, has tended to favour joint statues – particular humans with a known animal – imagined from the past. In Australia, in particular, the depiction of animals partnered with humans originated during the First World War with the sculptural depiction of a particular donkey working alongside a medical orderly, Jack Simpson Fitzpatrick, commonly known as Simpson. Stephen Eisenman has argued that animals should enjoy much of the same basic rights as humans. Reviewers noted that the exhibition took as its central focus animal-human relationships, the treatment of animals by humans and the centrality of animals in human history.
