Category: Exhibitions

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Goings and comings!

Amoret Spooner (left) and Zoë Simmons (right) dismantling the exhibition (photo: Keiko Ikeuchi, MHS)
Amoret Spooner (left) and Zoë Simmons (right) dismantling the exhibition

This week we’ve been at the Museum of the History of Science on Broad Street, taking down our temporary exhibition, ‘Natural Histories’. We had some lovely feedback from people who saw the display. They enjoyed seeing old friends from the Museum of Natural History’s displays such as the giant ammonite that people can touch, the jaw of Megalosaurus, the first dinosaur ever to be described by scientists, and the lovely old insect collecting tools used by entomologists.

Specimens stored in spirit need very careful handling
Specimens stored in spirit need very careful handling

The exhibition also had some things we are rarely able to put on display. The beautiful hand-painted butterflies in William Jones’ Icones, and White Watson’s inlaid stone slabs representing the strata of Derbyshire, are just two of the treasures we normally keep in a darkened room because too much light will damage them. We showed crabs collected by Charles Darwin on the voyage of The Beagle, and even a plant from the University’s herbaria that was collected by Linnaeus, the Swedish scientist who devised the system of ‘Latin’ names we still use for plants and animals today.

Every item is being carefully checked and packed up, but don’t worry, they are not staying in our stores for long. We will be taking them to Banbury Museum where ‘Natural Histories’ will be going on show again from 30th November 2013 until late February 2014. So, even if you missed the exhibition in Oxford, you’ll have a last chance to see it in Banbury.

Conservator Gemma Aboe packs away the pigmy anteater
Conservator Gemma Aboe packs away the pigmy anteater

All photos, Keiko Ikeuchi, MHS

Monica Price, Head of Earth Collections

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Space traveller’s arrival

Limerick meteoriteTwo hundred years ago today, at 9 o’clock in the morning on 10 September 1813, the residents of County Limerick in Ireland had a bit of a surprise. They heard loud bangs as a shower of meteorites fell to ground. More than 48 kilograms of rock had just arrived from space!

More specifically, it had come from the asteroid belt, a band of rocky debris that orbits the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. Collisions can knock asteroids out of orbit, and occasionally send them hurtling on a collision course with Earth. Small fragments burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere, forming meteors or ‘shooting stars’. Larger pieces fall to the Earth’s surface, and these are known as meteorites.

Limerick chondrulesThe meteorite that fell over County Limerick broke into pieces, and the one in our collection is the second largest. It weighs nearly 8.5 kilograms, and landed near the village of Faha on the estates of the Blakeney family. The Rev. Robert Blakeney was an Oxford graduate whose ministry was in the parish of South Elm in Somerset. The meteorite was perhaps found in the rectory after his death, as it was the new rector’s younger brother, the Rev. John W. Griffith, who presented it to the University of Oxford in 1825.

The outer crust of the meteorite is smooth and dark where the surface melted as it fell through the Earth’s atmosphere. The inside is a pale grey rock. Look closely at the photograph to the left, and you can see flecks of metal – nickel iron alloy – and tiny rounded crystalline grains called chondrules. The picture shows an area about 35 mm x 20 mm.

The chondrules show that the Limerick belongs to a class of stony meteorites called ‘chondrites’. At around 4.55 billion years old, chondrite meteorites are some of the oldest materials in the Solar System. They give researchers important clues about how the planets – including the Earth – originally formed.

To celebrate the 200th anniversary of the arrival on Earth of the Limerick meteorite, we are exhibiting it in  ‘Presenting…’, a changing display of treasures from the Museum’s collection. Although the main Museum is closed, this display can be seen by visitors on the way through to the Pitt Rivers Museum, so do come and have a look. It might be the oldest thing you’ll ever see!

Photography: Dara Lohnes

Monica T. Price, Head of Earth Collections

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The Art and Science of Taxidermy

Derek Frampton

On Sunday 18 August we had the pleasure of welcoming professional freelance taxidermist Derek Frampton to the Museum of the History of Science, where our joint exhibition, Natural Histories, is being shown. As part of the exhibition’s public programme Derek delivered a very popular illustrated Table Talk on the Art and Science of Taxidermy.

An attentive audience
An attentive audience

Derek has pretty much been a taxidermist his whole life, having started by collecting, dissecting and drawing animals as a boy. Since then he has done a lot of work for museums, including us and the Natural History Museum in London, where he helped prepare Guy, the Museum’s famous gorilla.

“I really liked drawing and painting animals and would collect things I found. Then I realised I could open them up and became fascinated by the way they worked inside – the mechanics of the muscles and skeleton,” Derek told visitors to the event.

Finishing touches
Finishing touches

“But after a while the specimens started to get smelly and I’d get into trouble with my mum. So I’d have to throw them away and find some new ones. Eventually somebody said to me that the technique for preserving the animals was called taxidermy. I bought a book on it and I have been doing it ever since.”

For the Table Talk, Derek brought along the skin of a female partridge which had been killed in a road traffic accident.

During the hour he went through the process of turning the prepared skin into a finished piece of taxidermy. Using a photograph of a live partridge as a reference, Derek padded the bird with tow, a natural fibre, and inserted florists’ rods to give it a natural shape and posture.

Derek Frampton and the partidge
Partridge and Derek Frampton

At the end of the process the bird was tied and pinned to allow the skin to fully dry and contract, after which the cotton bindings will be removed.

The presentation was a fascinating insight into the half-art, half-science of taxidermy and the perfect complement to the Collect, Preserve, Study display in the Natural Histories exhibition.

The Art and Sciene of Taxidermy

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Getting about

Westwood

With our Goes to Town exhibits in place all over Oxford city centre, we are keeping our collections hard at work even while the Museum is closed. But it isn’t just our specimen collections that are getting all the action – material from the Archives has journeyed outside the Museum walls too…

In association with the Friends of Summertown Library, we have put together a display from our archival collections celebrating former Summertown resident and Museum scientist John Obadiah Westwood. Westwood was the first Hope Professor of Zoology at the University in the late 19th century, and in addition to being a leading figure in the development of entomology as an academic discipline, he was also an amazing artist.

Westwood was so well known for his ability to accurately capture the details of insect specimens in his own work that he was commissioned to complete illustrations for a number of important entomological texts of his time.

Chairman of the Friends of Summertown Library, Marcus Ferrar, with the display at Summertown Library
Chairman of the Friends of Summertown Library, Marcus Ferrar, with the display at Summertown Library

Our archive is full of examples of Westwood’s talents, though most of his drawings have never been on display to the public before. This first-of-a-kind display for our Archive features a number of original copies of his work, including drawings of butterflies, beetles and even medieval manuscripts. It also features lots of interesting facts about Westwood, including his love of gardening and his fascination with biblical texts.

Westwood by Chris JarvisThe exhibit in Summertown Library runs until 18 October 2013 and can been seen during library opening hours. If you’re there with children don’t forget to ask for a Museum of Natural History colouring sheet, featuring this drawing of Westwood in action by our other talented Museum artist and Education Officer, Chris Jarvis.

A big thanks goes to the Friends of Summertown Library for working with us to make this unique opportunity happen. Do let us and the library know what you think.

Kate Santry, Head of Archival Collections

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Look out Oxford…

GTT

There’s a flurry of last minute activity around here at the moment. Display cases are being collected; a funny proto-human ape creature model is being cleaned and prepared for the limelight; and logo-adorned lab coats are being freshly starched and pressed. We are preparing to go to town.

Mobile site
The smartphone-friendly Goes to Town website

You may have seen our teaser trailer a few weeks back. If not, you can check it out here. It didn’t give much away, but regular readers of this blog deserve a proper heads-up: Next week we will be installing twelve specimens in venues all around Oxford city centre, creating the Goes to Town trail, accompanied by a specially-designed mobile website.

You can see what the goestotown.com website will look like on the right here. It features lots of extra info about each specimen on the trail, along with audio recordings about each exhibit made by Museum staff and Oxford University scientists. The site will go fully live after the specimens are all safely in their new homes next week.

Goes to Town will remain in the twelve Oxford venues for six months. During that time residents and visitors to the city can complete the trail and enter our competition. Every specimen display has two Top Trumps-style ratings, one for Danger and one for Rarity. If you tell us which has the highest rating in each category we’ll enter you into a draw for prizes to be awarded when the Museum reopens in February 2014.

There will be another little film to follow too, so watch out for that. In the meantime we need to get back to preparing our crate-clad displays. As you can see below, the workshop chaps are beavering away at this right now…

See you in town!

Crate
Preparing the displays

Scott Billings – Communications coordinator

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Meet Professor Dodo

Professor Dodo

A couple of weeks ago we opened Natural Histories, our temporary exhibition developed in collaboration with, and hosted at, the Museum of the History of Science. If you’re in Oxford and haven’t been to see it, pop in to the MHS on Broad Street; the exhibition’s in the basement.

There’s a host of interesting things to look at, including the jaw of the first scientifically described dinosaur, the Megalosaurus; a gigantic ammonite fossil which you can touch; and specimens collected by Charles Darwin during his famous voyage on board The Beagle.

Monstrosities
This ‘Monstrosities’ drawer features specimens collected by John Obadiah Westwood (1805–1893), each exhibiting some kind of deformity.

We were keen to put something specifically for families and children into the exhibition too. So our education officer Rachel Parle coaxed our primary education officer Chris Jarvis, who is also a splendid cartoonist, to create the Professor Dodo character you see above.

Prof D narrates and guides younger visitors through the exhibition, pointing out interesting things and raising a few questions along the way. So if you have children, bring them along too.

Finally, if you can’t make it to the exhibition, or would like to read about some of its themes and specimens at your leisure, then check out the dedicated Natural Histories website, which contains a selection of images and text from the gallery displays.

As ever, let us know what you think, either in the comments below or via Twitter @morethanadodo.

Scott Billings, Communications coordinator