Tasmanian Tiger: case study of the Museum of Extinction

Thylacinus Cynocephalus,Marsupial from Australia commonly known by the name ofTasmanian Tiger, was declared extinct in 1936. It is an example of how a legend is established betweenreality, fiction and popular myth.

My interest of the Tasmanian tiger happened in Australia, during my residency at the University of Western Sydney, NEPEAN in 1993. In one of those outings in Sydney,to the Tasmanian school of art, while visiting the island, I found a beer with a label ofthe Tasmanian tiger.

This image later became a recurrent image that I researched, read documentsvisitsto theMuseum of Natural Historyand I was able to find out that in 1936 it was t was considered extinct.

On the otherhand, it was alive in the same way that it was in the beer label, it wasalive in the imaginary of all the people that spoke about it. Nobody had seen it.