The Conversation

“The Horse,” American Museum of Natural History, Central Park West at 79th Street, New York, NY 10024. Open daily 10–5:45, except Thanksgiving and Christmas, through Jan. 9, 2008.

As Daniel Radcliffe makes his Broadway debut in the buff in Equus, farther uptown, at the American Museum of Natural History, a special exhibit called “The Horse” has already opened to applause. The beauty, grace, speed, strength, mythic proportions and historical importance of horses are limned in detail—but you will find not one word about their legendary stupidity. Instead, horse lovers will be pleased and, possibly, edified.

I spent two hours at “The Horse,” which is longer than I normally spend at any museum. It’s a big exhibit and it makes a large claim: The horse, in terms of its impact on civilization, is the most important animal domesticated by human beings. Dogs, pigs, sheep, goats and cattle were domesticated earlier; the horse, however, gave people an entirely new level of mobility, which radically enlarged their world. In the 11^th century, this mobility engendered the Mongol Empire, the largest the world has ever known, created by an army and a society entirely on horseback. This accomplishment, in turn, solidified the ancient trading routes known as the Silk Road and increased, exponentially, trade between East and West.

The exhibit begins with the moving image of a bay horse on a big screen accompanied by the sounds of hoof beats made somewhat surreal by slo-mo effects. Next is a diorama representing three species of early horse in a habitat of mixed savannah and woodland about 11 million years ago. Dinohippus, the one-toed grazer, is in the lineage of the modern horse, Equus caballus, and the two others, multi-toed browsers, are species of lineages that are now extinct. All 200+ breeds of Equus caballus are descended from the European wild horse, or tarpan, and have only seven living equine cousins, including the donkey, three kinds of zebras, two kinds of wild asses and Przewalski’s horse.

Sandra Olsen, of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, who has worked for 15 years studying the Botai people who lived thousands of years ago in what is now northern Kazakhstan, lectures on video about the domestication of the horse. Get back, Borat! Here we have cultural learnings of Kazakhstan to make benefit ignorant Americans.

From the Caucasus, horses rapidly spread east and west, and the exhibit pursues their many incarnations, in the lives of European knights and Japanese samurai, in the Spanish conquest of the Americas, and in the transformation of Plains Indians, who became, within a couple of generations, some of the finest riders ever seen.

One of the more ingenious installations is the metal drum designed by Eadward Muybridge to demonstrate his invention: the moving picture. The drum is pierced with slots along its side that resemble the fenestration for archers in medieval castles; along the inside wall of the drum are pasted the pictures of a horse and rider. Spin the drum slowly and, as you look through the slots, you will see one still picture after another; but spin it at just the right speed and suddenly, like a rabbit pulled from a hat, the images cohere and horse and rider come magically to life.

The horse still functions as transportation in some parts of the world, but in developed countries horses exist mainly to be ridden for exercise and pleasure or to be raced or ridden in other equine sports. “The Horse” puts an unflattering spotlight on racing by focusing on the efforts to save the 2006 Kentucky Derby–winner Barbaro after his injury in the Preakness. Many will recall that the filly Eight Belles was euthanized after finishing second, behind Big Brown, in this year’s Derby. These deaths, in highly visible races, have pressured the racing industry to adopt synthetic turf, which appears to lower the risk of injuries.

My own fascination with the horse began in childhood, in Dallas, Texas, when my parents bought me and my siblings a pony. My grandfather had worked for Charlie Howard, Seabiscuit’s owner, and my mother was always a racing fan. Now I have become a low form of life, what the English call a punter: one who gambles against a bookmaker. Punters are as legendary for their stupidity as the horses they bet on, but every race offers at least the promise of a momentary thrill. A museum exhibit is educational, but it can’t match racing for excitement. Go and see “The Horse,” but then take the Long Island Rail Road out to Belmont Park or the A train to the Big A (or any one of hundreds of tracks across the country) and see the horses. They’re the real deal.

Tags: American Museum of Natural History, Daniel D'Arezzo