Professor Rich Pell‘s book “This Is Not An Artifact” is now available for purchase. The book, which makes the exceptional collection of the Center for PostNatural History available to a global audience for the first time, is published by K. Verlag publishing.
The manipulation of life is one of the oldest and most popularly neglected forms of cultural production. Yet it is evident in prehistoric cave dwellings, organic vegetable gardens, concentrated animal feeding operations, and myriad other sites and scenes. PostNatural History is the study of the origins, habitats, and evolution of organisms that have been intentionally altered by humans through captivity, breeding, or engineering. These lifeforms relay stories that challenge and transform our understanding of human culture. This book features hundreds of entries for collection specimens organized under the postnatural categorical matrix of Isolating, Breeding, Engineering, and Leaking.
Founded in 2008, the Center for PostNatural History is an independent museum with a private collection in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Since March 2012, CPNH has been visited by thousands of people from all over the world. CPNH is the only museum of its kind in the world—collecting artifacts of the intentional and heritable changes humans make to the living world as natural history museums, nearly without exception, have chosen to ignore this category of life.