Category: Learning

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Crunchy on the outside

By Susie Glover, HOPE Learning Officer

We have an ambitious project underway at the Museum, to preserve a unique and scientifically important collection of over one million British insects. It’s called HOPE for the Future, after the Hope Entomological Collections, and we are keen to shout about how these specimens can help us understand biodiversity, habitats and ecologies.

The learning team behind the project are today launching a new blog for young people interested in entomology. Intriguingly, it’s called Crunchy on the Outside, but please don’t confuse this with the similar, but fundamentally different, mid-’90s advertising campaign for the Dime bar.

A high magnification image of an insect, face-on, showing large proboscis and brown body.
One of many weird and wonderful specimens from our collection, the Acorn Weevil (Curculio glandium).
Here is a peek at some of the tools of the trade, used to move and mend specimens like this moth.

Crunchy will be crammed full of interesting insect info, fun things to make and do, a peek behind the scenes at the Museum, and news from people, past and present, who work in the field of entomology. The odd bad joke may also worm its way in (What do butterflies sleep on? Cater-pillows).

The blog will also be a platform for young people to have their say, about the topics covered on Crunchy itself, as well as on the activity of the Museum. It will give them first dibs on access to related events too. You can check it out, follow, and share at crunchyontheoutside.com.

HOPE for the Future is funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Wax models of magnified mites mounted on a black board

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Of parasites, dinosaurs, and other model animals

Elaine Charwat has been on a journey into the attic storerooms behind the scenes of the Museum to discover 19th-century wax models of parasites. A strange occupation you might think, but it’s all part of her doctoral research programme with the Arts and Humanities Research Council to learn about the use of models and replicas in science, past and present. In the podcast above Elaine meets Mark Carnall, Zoology Collections Manager at the OUMNH, who talks about the differences between models and the thousands of specimens he looks after, and Dr Péter Molnár, Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Toronto, who offers important insights into current research using mathematical models.

Different types of models and replicas are everywhere in the Museum, and they tell us much about the organisms they represent or reconstruct, but even more about processes in research and science. Made to communicate and produce data, these larger-than-life objects are as fascinating as their subjects…

Top image: Wax models of Sarcoptes scabiei (itch mite) produced by Rudolf Weisker, Leipzig (Germany), probably late 1870s or early 1880s. These models are listed as having been on public display at the Museum in 1911, labelled: “Sarcoptes scabiei: enlarged wax models, male & female + mouth parts”.

A stone statue of a bearded man, hands crossed at his front, shoulders draped in a cloak

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Babylon: Natural Theology versus Scientific Naturalism

When the campaign to build the Museum was launched, science at Oxford was understood as natural theology. By the time the Museum opened in 1860, a new secular approach to science was on the rise.

In this last episode of the Temple of Science podcast series we see how the art and science of the Museum responded to the challenge posed by Charles Darwin’s theories of evolution and natural selection, and the scientific naturalism that they epitomised. 

You can watch the whole series here.
(https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxCYszldeUZGdD75meu90fvsH2Vjq54YE)

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‘Chambers of the Ministering Priests’

The Museum was not originally simply a museum as we understand it today: It was an entire science faculty. In episode four of the Temple of Science podcast series we see how the museum’s overarching principle of design – that art should be used to teach science and to inspire generations of scientists – was put into practice in some of its less familiar but no less beautiful spaces. 

You can watch the whole series here.
(https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxCYszldeUZGdD75meu90fvsH2Vjq54YE)

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The Sanctuary of the Temple of Science

The central court of the Museum was described by one founder as ‘the sanctuary of the Temple of Science’. In the third episode of the Temple of Science podcast series we see how every detail of this unique space was carefully planned and crafted to form a comprehensive model of natural science. 

You can watch the whole series here.
(https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxCYszldeUZGdD75meu90fvsH2Vjq54YE)

Black and white photo of a man carving the decorative archway of a window

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‘God’s own Museum’

In the second episode of the Temple of Science podcast series we take a closer look at the decoration on the outside of the Museum building.

From the outset, Oxford University Museum wanted to teach the principles of natural history through art as well as science. The carvings around the windows of the façade, incorporating designs by John Ruskin and carved by the brilliant Irish stonemason and sculptor James O’Shea, revel in the vitality of nature, while the decorations round the main entrance remind us that, for the scientists in Victorian Oxford, natural history was the study of God’s creation.

You can watch the whole series here.
(https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxCYszldeUZGdD75meu90fvsH2Vjq54YE)