14INTRODUCTIONspread from the entomological cabinets and in a few hours had destroyed
90 percent of the collection. Louis Albert de Broglie, standing outside the
building in the cold, amid the smoke and the fire trucks, told his wife: “It
is all over—there are flames everywhere.”^3 The picture was devastating,
and news of Deyrolle’s fire began to spread just as fast as the collection
turned into ashes. TV and online news coverage from National Geo-
graphic, the New York Times, the Te l e g ra p h, Le Figaro, and even general
interest publications like Va n i t y Fa i r and W Magazine captured audi-
ences’ imagination.^4 It was therefore no surprise that news of the fire also
attracted the interest of many artists. Among others, Anselm Kiefer, Gé-
rard Depardieu, Sophie Calle, Paul Smith, Huang Yong Ping, Karen Knorr,
and Damien Hirst expressed their sympathy for the shop, while pho-
tographers Laurent Bochet, Pierre Assouline, Nan Goldin, and Martin
d’Orgeval rushed to immortalize the charred remains of the few sur-
FIGURE I.1 Deyrolle, Paris, interior view, 2007. Photograph courtesy of Sara Gold-
smiths, CC BY 2.0.