After reading an interesting article here, about the Natural History Museum and their Spirit Collections, I saw they were running tours open to the public, and I knew it would be something I definitely needed to see. I certainly was not disappointed!
I know it would be something of great interest to me, as for my Degree Show exhibition I had created a wall sized set of drawings based around the cabinet of curiosities, and specimens stored in jars. Our guide for the tour, Jen, was very friendly and seemed to know a lot about the collections, which are located in the new side of the museum, opening in 2002. With over 80,000,000 specimens in their collections, a lot of storage space is needed, and the new building was custom designed to store these specimens properly. It was fascinating to see that some of the specimens are extremely old, while new arrivals were kept in separate storage units, awaiting classification and identification. It was interesting to see some specimens were kept in containers that must have been to have by the person who collected the specimens, just like the onions jar. They even had a cupboard full of specimens collected by Charles Darwin, including his pet octopus!
Here are a few of the many photographs I took, and while I may or may not use them to directly influence my artwork, it was definitely a fascinating tour that I will not forget any time soon! I look forward to the Natural History Museum opening up more of its stores up to the public in this way.
