What happens when fashion, natural history, conservation, and art collide?

In this episode of Bird Joy, we’re joined by New York City’s premier licensed professional taxidermist, Divya Anantharaman, an award-winning artist whose work spans museums, galleries, fashion houses, and natural history institutions. Divya specializes in birds, small mammals, and anatomic anomalies, blending scientific precision with emotional storytelling and symbolic design. Check out her work here.

Divya’s path wasn’t linear. She left the corporate fashion world to pursue her love of natural history, becoming the resident taxidermist at the Morbid Anatomy Museum and building a global following for her taxidermy, skeletal, and entomology displays, as well as jewelry and wearable art rooted in wonder.

Divya shares insights from her feature in the documentary Rearranging Skin, her book Stuffed Animals: A Modern Guide to Taxidermy, and her collaborations with institutions, artists, and conservation groups like NYC Bird Alliance and NYC Plover Project.

At its heart, this conversation explores the human-animal relationship, conservation, legacy, memory, and what becomes possible when science becomes art.

If you’ve ever felt the pull of curiosity toward feathers, form, history, or preservation, this episode is for you.

Science. Style. Wonder. And a whole lot of Bird Joy! 

BIPOC Birding Club of Wisconsin

In Color Birding Club