From India to the Museum via the Zoo: The Career of the Elephant Avi in Barcelona

Abstract

The Indian elephant Avi, born around 1875, spent the first part of his life in the private collection of animals of the wealthy Barcelonese banker Luis Martí-Codolar. In 1892, Martí-Codolar sold his collection to the city of Barcelona. It became the nucleus of the Barcelona zoo. Soon Avi became the most popular animal of the new zoo drawing large crowds. There are numerous photos of the pachyderm, many of them showing him in "interaction" with the visitors. Avi also figured in a number of caricatures in the Barcelonese press often in conjunction with political criticism. Avi died in May 1914 leaving yet his second career was only about to begin. The taxidermist Luis Soler i Pujol was commissioned to mount the skeleton of the elephant as well as his hide. For the remainder of the twentieth century Avi's remains were exhibited in the Natural History Museum of Catalonia. This paper will use Avi's biography, alive and dead, to explore the cultures of natural history of fin-de-siècle Barcelona and beyond. Martí-Codolar's collection and the early Barcelona zoo were dedicated to the project of acclimatization, or "applied" natural history. Yet soon Avi converted from a useful into a spectacular animal. As skeleton and hide Avi represented the visual (and static) pedagogy of natural history museums, literally fading away in the course of the twentieth century. Due to the numerous traces Avi left in different media and the collective memory of the Barcelonese he also represents a form of popular natural history. This paper will discuss how this elephant was reconfigured, renamed, relocated, repaired and remembered. Avi was more than just an object of knowledge. He oscillated between zoos and natural history museums, between entertainment and education, between exotic animal, "emblem of Barcelona", "friend of children" and not least as an "exemplary Catalan", well behaved and patient.