When Even the Animals Are Fake News

the first “Feejee Mermaid” in what is now Jakarta and sold it to a gullible ship captain, who sold it to some huckster back home. Other hucksters thereafter cobbled together their own imitations (a case of anti-intellectual property theft) and sold them to gullible curiosity seekers hoping for something appealing, appalling, convulsive, repulsive, “something for everybawdy,” to borrow a little from Stephen Sondheim. What they got, after they paid their penny or two to get inside was, says Ksepka, “a ghastly beast stitched together from monkey and fish parts.”

The Bruce Museum’s own Feejee Mermaid

There’s lots more to “Monsters and Mermaids,” and you should check it out in the few weeks left of its run. It’s a great show, and the Bruce Museum is a gem, a museum that puts science together with art (and they belong together). So right now you can also take in shows on early Hockney paintings, amazingly varied and lovely sculptures by twentieth-century artist Harry Bertoia, and some terrific photography. Worth the trip.