Museum of the Week #5

So, this past weekend found me back at the Natural History Museum. I went with a friend to see this year’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition, which, as usual, was excellent. I don’t agree with the overall winner (although the junior winner was definitely well deserved), but there were many beautiful and inspiring photos on display, and once again I found myself wishing I could take pictures that good.

While we were there, we also went on a free tour of the museum’s spirit collection (things preserved in alcohol (and ocassionally formalin)). The tour took us around the stores in the Zoology Spirit Building, which is part of the new (although I suppose it isn’t so new anymore!) Darwin Centre. The place is HUGE. There are whole floors filled with cabinets, stuffed with animals in glass containers of different sizes. We were allowed to see into a few cabinets, and were greeted by the watery stares of a bat, various rodents, and an upside-down tamandua.

We then moved into the tank room, which is the highlight of the tour. Here they keep all the really big specimens, including large fish, shetland ponies…and a giant squid (Architeuthis dux, nicknamed ‘Archie’ by The Sun newspaper apparently, despite the fact that the specimen is female!). The squid was really the main reason for our visit…having both read Kraken by China Mieville (a seriously weird, but very good, urban fantasy novel which features Archie herself and a cult of giant squid worshippers) we were really excited to see her. And she didn’t disappoint. Dominating the room in a giant glass tank, she is the length of a London bus. And she wasn’t alone – Architeuthis shares her tank with part of a colossal squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, an incomplete specimen of which mostly tentacles survive). While not much of the colossal squid was present, the sharply hooked tentacles gave a very good impression of the predatory prowess of this little-known deep-sea cephalopod. There is debate about which squid is actually larger, as both are known from very few complete (and mostly immature) specimens.

The giant squid may be the main attraction of the tour for most people, but I was just as excited to see some of the tank room’s other residents, especially some very old specimens of Monotremes from 1880 with original hand-written on their jars proclaiming that these specimens were sent to Dr Owen for examination…Dr Owen of course being Richard Owen, famed anatomist and founder of the NHM. And then I got about as near to a religious experience as an athiest evolutionary biologist really can, when we were shown a small locked glass cabinet sitting nonchalantly in the corner of the room, containing specimens collected on the Beagle by Charles Darwin. Many of them had their lids painted yellow, which indicates that they are the type specimens for their species (the specimen used in the original description of a species, which holds the name, and against which all other specimens are compared). In the lab next door we also got to see a jar containing a small octopus which Darwin kept as a pet.

The spirit collection isn’t just there to look pretty (although it could be argued that some specimens are somewhat less than pretty!). It is an important research resource, and is regularly used by academics from all over the world who are interested in anatomy, taxonomy, evolution, and a whole host of other topics.

The tours on the weekend are only half an hour long, and give a brief introduction to the collections, taking in only a very few highlights. During the week they run longer tours – I might have to do one of those sometime, as I just love poking around in museum stores, and they don’t get much more exciting than the stores at the NHM.

Photos weren’t allowed on the tour, but there are also specimens on display in the public lobby of the Spirit Building. Here are a few tasters of this wonderful collection:

Things I’ve learned working in a museum (part III)

That paper can be surprisingly heavy…

I thought that the art gallery would be one of the easiest sections of our cataloguing work within the museum. Apparently I was wrong. Due to various issues (involving huge boxes in very narrow aisles stored well above head height and accessible only with a worryingly wobbly ladder) it has turned out to be one of the most problematical areas. I thought that my main issue in the art gallery would be my complete lack of knowledge about art (seriously – I had no idea who Mackintosh was. I now know very well, having catalogued a very large amount of sketches, prints, paintings, wall hangings, wood panels, chairs, wardrobes, stained glass windows, meat safes…CRM was a very prolific man! And very unchoosy in his work. He would do anything. I’ve seen designs for carpets, furniture, houses, tombstones…you name it, he would design it for you!).

But it turns out that the main issue is just how much paper can weigh! Some of the boxes of prints weigh more than you would think humanly possible, considering that they basically contain PAPER! There are some boxes that even two of us can’t move at all. Which is frustrating, because I want to see everything! Every day is like Christmas, opening up the boxes to see what goodies are inside! Even if it is just yet more Turner prints (they’re beautiful, but there are a lot of them!).

That art can be interesting…

I know nothing about art because I’ve never taken much of an interest in art. This is largely due to the fact that I find art galleries boring. And THIS is largely due to the fact that art galleries don’t tell you what you need to know…you look at a painting, and next to it will be a panel giving you the artist’s name, the title of the work, the techniques used, the artist’s influences, etc…but they don’t tell you WHAT IT IS YOU’RE LOOKING AT! Which in some cases is easy enough to fathom – a painting of a bloke plowing a field is a painting of a bloke plowing a field (and is probably also entitled ‘A Bloke Plowing A Field’, or something equally unimaginative). But often it can be a painting of (for example) some obscure bible story, and unless you’ve read the bible cover to cover you have no clue what it is you’re looking at. And they don’t actually GIVE you a clue. A brief description of the subject matter would do, but no, obviously too difficult. Which is why I have a very short attention span when it comes to art galleries.

But we have seen some really fantastic things amongst the collections. Every day there are inevitably some things which are just a little ‘meh’, but then the next box will contain gorgeous colour woodcuts of Scottish landscapes, or 18th Century satirical cartoons, and you don’t want to put them away! You can waste a lot of time just admiring the stuff rather than cataloguing it. Or you could, if you had about 10 years to spare! Unfortunately we only have one year in which to go through EVERYTHING, so at some point you have to put things away and move on. Which is always a disappointment, because I’m sure there are lots of beautiful things that I have missed. But there’s always the hope that there will be even more beautiful things in the next box…