This Master’s thesis considers the display of nature in natural history museums in relation to anthropocentrism shaping human relations with the natural world and environmental concerns. Looking at ecological relationality and more-than-human theories, this research seeks to examine embedded structural conditions and their impact on the presentation of nature in museum contexts, centering the question: How are scenographic practices implicated in anthropocentric narratives by shaping the display of nature in natural history museums?

Understanding display as involved in knowledge production, a scenographic and spatial analysis of common exhibition formats reveals how the institutional context makes nature knowable in particular ways, implicated in political, social, disciplinary discourses. In a movement between control and care, anthropocentrism surfaces as a systemic condition; the role of scenographic practice is critically examined within this.