18 April 2011
By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News
Albatross feathers from museum specimens have allowed scientists to construct a record of mercury pollution dating back more than 100 years.
The feathers, from the black-footed albatross, contain traces of mercury that the birds picked up when they fed.
The species is endangered; and although fishing is the main cause, the team suggests mercury levels may have been high enough to impair breeding.
The study is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The team analysed feathers from 54 birds kept in museums at Harvard University and the University of Washington in Seattle, US.
The oldest samples are 120 years old.
There was no trend in overall mercury concentrations over time.
But the level of methylmercury - a toxic form of the metal, formed often by bacteria, did show a rise.
Methylmercury is easily absorbed by marine lifeforms such as small fish; and predators of those lifeforms, such as birds, can end up with big concentrations in their tissue.
It can cause developmental defects in humans, and there is evidence that it can damage reproduction in birds and fish.
"People have looked at mercury levels using museum specimens before, but mostly in the Atlantic," said Scott Edwards, a biology professor at Harvard who also curates the university museum's ornithology collection.
"Ours is one of the first to look at patterns in the Pacific basin; this has the largest number of seabird colonies, has the most endangered colonies, and is under severe threat from mercury emissions from Asia."
Of the other half, the biggest source is coal-burning, with mercury ocurring as a trace element in many coal deposits.
Although the largest historical sources were North America and Europe, Asia now contributes about two-thirds of the total from energy and industry.
Two years ago, governments agreed to establish a global treaty to restrict mercury emissions, a process due to be finalised in 2013. Hooked
The pattern of rising methylmercury concentrations in the feathers is, the researchers suggest, a reflection of rising levels in the environment.
But older samples also contained mercury that had apparently been a component of preservative chemicals applied by curators - chemicals that have largely now been phased out.
The scientists would now like to work with living albatrosses to answer some outstanding questions on mercury's impact.
"We don't have any direct evidence that levels of mercury were impacting their reproductive success," said Professor Edwards.
"What we'd like to do next is to measure levels live albatrosses, and see whether there's a correlation with the chances of seeing their eggs hatching.
"They're fantastic birds, and a very tractable species to study, so I'd love to do some more work with them."
Like many species of albatross, the black-footed - found only in the northern Pacific Ocean - has been badly affected by longline fishing, where vessels trail lines of hooks tens of kilometres long behind them, the hooks baited to attract high-value predatory fish such as tuna and marlin.
The bait also attract albatrosses and turtles, and longlining is a leading cause of mortality in both, though a number of countries have introduced legislation mandating the use of hooks that are safe for turtles and birds.
About half of the mercury going into the atmosphere comes from natural sources such as volcanoes.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13121088
(Via Dawn Holloway)
Showing posts with label Museums. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Museums. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Mesmerised by the macabre
Charles Spencer felt as though he had entered a Harry Potter-like parallel universe when he discovered the Grant Museum of Zoology
By Charles Spencer
9:58AM BST 11 Apr 2011
There are blessed moments of wonder in life when you seem to have relinquished the humdrum world of poor harassed Muggles and entered a Harry Potter-like parallel universe.
Paxman’s in Union Street, south London, a basement shop entirely devoted to the sale, repair and maintenance of French horns, offers one such experience. This splendid establishment would seem quite at home in JK Rowling’s Diagon Alley.
Even more weird and wonderful, however, is the Grant Museum of Zoology, which I have only just discovered and which seems to have arrived in Bloomsbury direct from Hogwarts. It is one of the most delightful, quirky and at times downright revolting collections I have ever encountered, a gigantic cabinet of curiosities housed in a high-ceilinged former medical library that is part of the UCL complex of buildings.
The museum, new to these atmospheric premises in University Street, was founded by Robert Edmond Grant in 1827.
He was appointed to the first chair of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy in Britain at the newly established University of London (later UCL) and was an early mentor of Charles Darwin. The museum began as he assembled teaching materials for his students, and many others have been added to the collection over the years.
The place is now packed to the gunwales with animal skeletons, stuffed wildlife and all kinds of scary-looking specimens in preserving jars. Some of them are not for the faint-hearted. Many feature creatures that have been bisected to reveal the brain and innards. Look at one side of a glass case and you will see a delightful tabby cat; look at the other and you will be treated to every detail of its inner workings.
There is also a display of parasitic worms, with the even more disconcerting information in the guidebook that tapeworms have been known to reach a length of 40 feet in the human gut.
The curators seem to relish black humour. As you enter you notice that a group of human skeletons are looking down at you from the high balcony that runs round the exhibition space. And a cluster of turtles have been diagonally arranged on a wall like the flying ducks on Hilda Ogden’s “muriel” in Coronation Street.
Look out, too, for what looks like a gigantic sweet jar filled with dozens of tiny moles, their noses and paws still pink as the day they were pickled.
This creepy but beautiful museum – the skeleton of a 17ft anaconda resembles an extraordinarily intricate sculpture and many of the exhibits bring the work of Damien Hirst to mind – would make a superb setting for a piece of site-specific theatre. The Punchdrunk company, recently awarded a whopping increase in its Arts Council grant, should check it out urgently. And anyone with a taste for the macabre, the bizarre or just an interest in natural history will be spellbound. God’s universe rarely seems stranger or more varied than it does here.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturecritics/charlesspencer/8442391/Mesmerised-by-the-macabre.html
By Charles Spencer
9:58AM BST 11 Apr 2011
There are blessed moments of wonder in life when you seem to have relinquished the humdrum world of poor harassed Muggles and entered a Harry Potter-like parallel universe.
Paxman’s in Union Street, south London, a basement shop entirely devoted to the sale, repair and maintenance of French horns, offers one such experience. This splendid establishment would seem quite at home in JK Rowling’s Diagon Alley.
Even more weird and wonderful, however, is the Grant Museum of Zoology, which I have only just discovered and which seems to have arrived in Bloomsbury direct from Hogwarts. It is one of the most delightful, quirky and at times downright revolting collections I have ever encountered, a gigantic cabinet of curiosities housed in a high-ceilinged former medical library that is part of the UCL complex of buildings.
The museum, new to these atmospheric premises in University Street, was founded by Robert Edmond Grant in 1827.
He was appointed to the first chair of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy in Britain at the newly established University of London (later UCL) and was an early mentor of Charles Darwin. The museum began as he assembled teaching materials for his students, and many others have been added to the collection over the years.
The place is now packed to the gunwales with animal skeletons, stuffed wildlife and all kinds of scary-looking specimens in preserving jars. Some of them are not for the faint-hearted. Many feature creatures that have been bisected to reveal the brain and innards. Look at one side of a glass case and you will see a delightful tabby cat; look at the other and you will be treated to every detail of its inner workings.
There is also a display of parasitic worms, with the even more disconcerting information in the guidebook that tapeworms have been known to reach a length of 40 feet in the human gut.
The curators seem to relish black humour. As you enter you notice that a group of human skeletons are looking down at you from the high balcony that runs round the exhibition space. And a cluster of turtles have been diagonally arranged on a wall like the flying ducks on Hilda Ogden’s “muriel” in Coronation Street.
Look out, too, for what looks like a gigantic sweet jar filled with dozens of tiny moles, their noses and paws still pink as the day they were pickled.
This creepy but beautiful museum – the skeleton of a 17ft anaconda resembles an extraordinarily intricate sculpture and many of the exhibits bring the work of Damien Hirst to mind – would make a superb setting for a piece of site-specific theatre. The Punchdrunk company, recently awarded a whopping increase in its Arts Council grant, should check it out urgently. And anyone with a taste for the macabre, the bizarre or just an interest in natural history will be spellbound. God’s universe rarely seems stranger or more varied than it does here.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturecritics/charlesspencer/8442391/Mesmerised-by-the-macabre.html
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Dinosaurs a new addition at Bridport museum
3:30pm Wednesday 6th April 2011
STAFF at Bridport Museum have thrown open their doors for the season with new displays – including a plesiosaur skeleton.
They have revamped upstairs display areas and mounted new exhibitions at the centre in South Street.
The new features include a Wedding Wonderland exhibition to mark the royal wedding and the plesiosaur skeleton.
Curator Emily Hicks said: “We have been busy over the winter period redecorating some of the upstairs display areas and mounting the new exhibitions for the season “The most recent addition to our Jurassic Coast gallery is a large plesiosaur skeleton.
“Mounting this has been a mammoth undertaking involving rebuilding a wall to take the weight of the display and its case.”
She added: “Our aim this season is to make learning more fun and hands-on for our younger visitors. “There will be Victorian costumes to try on, as well as slates to write with and games to play.
“There is also a new interactive in the Roman galleries with Roman toys and a mosaic to design.”
New exhibitions include Bridport Faces, which features portraits of prominent town and country people from the museum’s collection.
• On Wednesday, April 13 there will be a free mask-making day at the museum, between 10am and 5pm. It is suitable for all ages.
http://www.dorsetecho.co.uk/news/8955559.Dinosaurs_a_new_addition_at_Bridport_museum/
(Via Dark Dorset)
STAFF at Bridport Museum have thrown open their doors for the season with new displays – including a plesiosaur skeleton.
They have revamped upstairs display areas and mounted new exhibitions at the centre in South Street.
The new features include a Wedding Wonderland exhibition to mark the royal wedding and the plesiosaur skeleton.
Curator Emily Hicks said: “We have been busy over the winter period redecorating some of the upstairs display areas and mounting the new exhibitions for the season “The most recent addition to our Jurassic Coast gallery is a large plesiosaur skeleton.
“Mounting this has been a mammoth undertaking involving rebuilding a wall to take the weight of the display and its case.”
She added: “Our aim this season is to make learning more fun and hands-on for our younger visitors. “There will be Victorian costumes to try on, as well as slates to write with and games to play.
“There is also a new interactive in the Roman galleries with Roman toys and a mosaic to design.”
New exhibitions include Bridport Faces, which features portraits of prominent town and country people from the museum’s collection.
• On Wednesday, April 13 there will be a free mask-making day at the museum, between 10am and 5pm. It is suitable for all ages.
http://www.dorsetecho.co.uk/news/8955559.Dinosaurs_a_new_addition_at_Bridport_museum/
(Via Dark Dorset)
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Half a dodo found in museum drawer
Staff at Grant Museum surprised to discover remains of extinct bird amid mass of crocodile bones during move to new home
Maev Kennedy
guardian.co.uk, Monday 21 February 2011 18.14 GMT
Half a dodo has turned up in an Edwardian wooden box in a drawer at one of Britain's oldest natural history collections.
Not much surprises the staff at the Grant Museum, where the contents include an old sweet jar full to the brim with pickled baby moles, their paws pressed pathetically against the glass, and the skull and antlers of an extinct species of giant deer which some academics bought straight off the wall of an Irish pub.
However, even they were a little startled when the dodo turned up, stored with a mass of crocodile bones.
"They do have common characteristics, crocodiles and birds," Jack Ashby, the museum's learning access manager, said. "It was an understandable mistake."
The dodo remains emerged as the Grant, part of University College London, moved its 70,000-item collection to a new home in an Edwardian former medical library.
It may look like a collection of blackened bones, but the dodo is an exceptional find. The afterlife of the disastrously delicious flightless bird in museums is almost as tragic as its extinction in its native Mauritius in the 17th century.
No complete specimen survives, although in the 19th century at least two were destroyed by curators who decided they were in unacceptably poor condition, including the one at the Natural History Museum in Oxford that inspired Lewis Carroll's dodo in Alice in Wonderland.
The bones will be displayed alongside another treasure of the collection, the Grant's quagga – an extinct South African relative of the horse, resembling a zebra. The old catalogue said the collection held two zebras: it turned out that one was a donkey, and the other was the quagga, one of only seven almost complete skeletons in the world. (Almost complete because it lost a left hind leg, probably when the collection was moved to a Welsh slate mine during the Blitz.)
The catalogue has been tormenting the curators: the oldest entries merely say what the object is, not how it got there. College legend says their Galapagos tortoise came back on the Beagle with Charles Darwin, but they can't prove it. The cut marks on the inside of the shell strongly suggest the rest of the poor creature went into the stew pot on board.
The Grant, founded in 1827 as a teaching collection at UCL, is the last university zoological museum in London, and includes many items that were orphaned when their original homes closed. It still holds many specimens prepared by Robert Edmond Grant, the first professor of zoology and comparative anatomy in England.
Other finds include the lower jaw of a crocodile, now reunited with its skull which has been on display for a century, and a fossil pterosaur assumed to be a plaster cast, which to the surprise of staff turned out to be the real thing – and a rare specimen.
The new displays, lining the walls and gallery up to the ceiling, already look as if they've been there for a century, apart from interactive labels, created with the university's technology department, which will allow visitors to access or even add information through a smartphone, and the iPad on which debates will be launched about contentious issues such as animal experimentation and racial distinctions.
"People are fiercely protective of this museum," manager Natasha McEnroe said. "They loved the old fashioned cases jammed full of specimens, and they didn't want a thing changed. But this new space is so beautiful, we hope people will love it even more."
The Grant Museum reopens to the public on March 15. Admission is free.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/feb/21/dodo-found-grant-museum-drawer
Maev Kennedy
guardian.co.uk, Monday 21 February 2011 18.14 GMT
Half a dodo has turned up in an Edwardian wooden box in a drawer at one of Britain's oldest natural history collections.
Not much surprises the staff at the Grant Museum, where the contents include an old sweet jar full to the brim with pickled baby moles, their paws pressed pathetically against the glass, and the skull and antlers of an extinct species of giant deer which some academics bought straight off the wall of an Irish pub.
However, even they were a little startled when the dodo turned up, stored with a mass of crocodile bones.
"They do have common characteristics, crocodiles and birds," Jack Ashby, the museum's learning access manager, said. "It was an understandable mistake."
The dodo remains emerged as the Grant, part of University College London, moved its 70,000-item collection to a new home in an Edwardian former medical library.
It may look like a collection of blackened bones, but the dodo is an exceptional find. The afterlife of the disastrously delicious flightless bird in museums is almost as tragic as its extinction in its native Mauritius in the 17th century.
No complete specimen survives, although in the 19th century at least two were destroyed by curators who decided they were in unacceptably poor condition, including the one at the Natural History Museum in Oxford that inspired Lewis Carroll's dodo in Alice in Wonderland.
The bones will be displayed alongside another treasure of the collection, the Grant's quagga – an extinct South African relative of the horse, resembling a zebra. The old catalogue said the collection held two zebras: it turned out that one was a donkey, and the other was the quagga, one of only seven almost complete skeletons in the world. (Almost complete because it lost a left hind leg, probably when the collection was moved to a Welsh slate mine during the Blitz.)
The catalogue has been tormenting the curators: the oldest entries merely say what the object is, not how it got there. College legend says their Galapagos tortoise came back on the Beagle with Charles Darwin, but they can't prove it. The cut marks on the inside of the shell strongly suggest the rest of the poor creature went into the stew pot on board.
The Grant, founded in 1827 as a teaching collection at UCL, is the last university zoological museum in London, and includes many items that were orphaned when their original homes closed. It still holds many specimens prepared by Robert Edmond Grant, the first professor of zoology and comparative anatomy in England.
Other finds include the lower jaw of a crocodile, now reunited with its skull which has been on display for a century, and a fossil pterosaur assumed to be a plaster cast, which to the surprise of staff turned out to be the real thing – and a rare specimen.
The new displays, lining the walls and gallery up to the ceiling, already look as if they've been there for a century, apart from interactive labels, created with the university's technology department, which will allow visitors to access or even add information through a smartphone, and the iPad on which debates will be launched about contentious issues such as animal experimentation and racial distinctions.
"People are fiercely protective of this museum," manager Natasha McEnroe said. "They loved the old fashioned cases jammed full of specimens, and they didn't want a thing changed. But this new space is so beautiful, we hope people will love it even more."
The Grant Museum reopens to the public on March 15. Admission is free.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/feb/21/dodo-found-grant-museum-drawer
Friday, October 15, 2010
Genius or grotesquery? The arrestingly strange world of Walter Potter
Seven years after it was sold and dispersed across the world, a bizarre Victorian collection is being reassembled in an exhibition co-curated by Peter Blake
The wild and eerie Victorian world of Walter Potter, where baby rabbits go to school and weep over their blotted copybooks, and where Bullingdon Club-style squirrels puff on cigars as toads play leapfrog and rat
police raid a drinking den, is being reassembled in London, seven years after his creatures were sold and scattered across the world.
The displays are being assembled at the reopened Museum of Everything, a pop-up museum in a former Victorian dairy, and later recording studio, in Primrose Hill, London.
Damien Hirst, who built his international fame on creatures such as his shark, and Sir Peter Blake, who is co-curator of the exhibition, have each lent pieces for the show. Both regard Potter as a genius, and his work as a national treasure which should have been kept together for permanent public display.
Other loans for the exhibition, opening next Wednesday, come from the comedian Harry Hill, the photographer David Bailey, other passionate private enthusiasts, and Pat Morris, a retired academic and expert on the history of taxidermy who intends to leave his own collection to a museum.
Hirst has contributed a truly Hirstian piece, called Happy Families, in which Potter has assembled natural "enemies" including cats, a dog, birds, squirrels, rats, mice and a tortoise, in a distinctly uneasy truce.
Blake's treasures include The House that Jack Built, which has a miniature hen – which Potter made by sticking feathers to a wooden mould – watching over a nest of wren's eggs, and The Babes in the Wood, another piece with a more than slightly creepy air.
Morris owns the largest piece, which was always the star attraction in the museum. The Death of Cock Robin, which displays more than 100 birds including a weeping robin widow and an owl gravedigger who has tumbled some tiny bones out of the soil while preparing space for the dead robin. It normally occupies one entire wall of Morris's guest bedroom in Ascot.
The beautifully painted backgrounds of the tableaux show the fields, woods and buildings of Bramber, the West Sussex village where Potter spent his long life. He was born in 1835, left school at 14, taught himself taxidermy (starting with a pet bird), and perfected his art with specimens donated by friends.
He opened his museum in a shed behind his father's pub. It proved so popular, boosting the pub trade dramatically, that the brewery created a purpose-built museum, which Potter ran until his death in 1918.
The museum was taken over by his son-in-law, who died in 1969; it was then sold and moved first to Brighton, then to Arundel, and finally to Jamaica Inn in Cornwall. When the last owners retired, and their taxidermist, who took care of the collection, died, there was an attempt to sell the collection as a whole. But finally it was scattered, after a Bonham's auction where pieces sold for up to £20,000 to collectors from
all over the world.
The founder of the Museum of Everything, James Brett, who made his money in films and property, opened the first exhibition of the "outsider art" he collects, including work made in prisons and mental health units, last year as a fringe event for the Frieze Art Fair. It was intended to run for a fortnight but was repeatedly extended due to public interest – and the free cafe – and by the time it finally did close had attracted more than 35,000 visitors.
He intended this time to re-create the glorious chaos of Blake's studio. The artist who created the cover for the Beatles' Sergeant Pepper is a collector and hoarder on an epic scale, and the exhibition will include some of his toys, shells, advertising ephemera and giant circus banners.
"The idea of re-creating the Potter museum began as a chance remark from Peter, and it became an obsession to bring the band back together," Brett said.
"It has taken over my life. But Potter is worth it, he was a true original, and himself absolutely an outsider artist as much as a craftsman. I can tell a Potter from the work of another taxidermist at a glance across a room – he was a genius."
Phone calls were still coming in every day from Potter fanatics, he said. The three-legged pig, the two-headed lamb and the four-winged chicken are already in place, but he has despaired of getting the kittens' wedding back from the US. He still hopes the rabbits' school, and the guinea pigs playing cricket, a piece believed to be in France, may yet turn up.
Morris, who began taxidermy himself aged seven with a dead squirrel, helped by a Boys Own guide to the subject, says that Potter was a very bad taxidermist all of his life: his birds were puff-chested because he fitted the skins over the wrong size bodies, and his cats had teddy bear eyes.
But Potter's genius was in his ability to create an entire miniature world, the world of a Victorian village which he knew intimately. The pieces are obsessively detailed, and full of tiny jokes for the observant: in the squirrels' club one creature is rejoicing over a winning hand, not realising that the viewer can see his opponent's even better cards. There are cases of stuffed birds on the club walls, and paintings the size of postage stamps signed by one W Potter.
The displays were never to everyone's taste. Many thought they were grotesque and an abuse of animals, despite the poster insisting that none had been killed deliberately for the collection. The animals did not die quietly in their sleep, though: Spot the dog, owned by a friend of Potter's, killed most of the rats for the drinking den and other scenes, and when she died she was stuffed and added to the collection.
Morris robustly defends taxidermy against the political correctness which he believes helped doom the collection. "Blaming taxidermy for the large number of rare species in glass cases is as illogical as blaming undertakers for all the dead people in cemeteries."
The Museum of Everything will run at least until Christmas.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/oct/08/walter-potter-exhibition-museum-everything
The wild and eerie Victorian world of Walter Potter, where baby rabbits go to school and weep over their blotted copybooks, and where Bullingdon Club-style squirrels puff on cigars as toads play leapfrog and rat
police raid a drinking den, is being reassembled in London, seven years after his creatures were sold and scattered across the world.
The displays are being assembled at the reopened Museum of Everything, a pop-up museum in a former Victorian dairy, and later recording studio, in Primrose Hill, London.
Damien Hirst, who built his international fame on creatures such as his shark, and Sir Peter Blake, who is co-curator of the exhibition, have each lent pieces for the show. Both regard Potter as a genius, and his work as a national treasure which should have been kept together for permanent public display.
Other loans for the exhibition, opening next Wednesday, come from the comedian Harry Hill, the photographer David Bailey, other passionate private enthusiasts, and Pat Morris, a retired academic and expert on the history of taxidermy who intends to leave his own collection to a museum.
Hirst has contributed a truly Hirstian piece, called Happy Families, in which Potter has assembled natural "enemies" including cats, a dog, birds, squirrels, rats, mice and a tortoise, in a distinctly uneasy truce.
Blake's treasures include The House that Jack Built, which has a miniature hen – which Potter made by sticking feathers to a wooden mould – watching over a nest of wren's eggs, and The Babes in the Wood, another piece with a more than slightly creepy air.
Morris owns the largest piece, which was always the star attraction in the museum. The Death of Cock Robin, which displays more than 100 birds including a weeping robin widow and an owl gravedigger who has tumbled some tiny bones out of the soil while preparing space for the dead robin. It normally occupies one entire wall of Morris's guest bedroom in Ascot.
The beautifully painted backgrounds of the tableaux show the fields, woods and buildings of Bramber, the West Sussex village where Potter spent his long life. He was born in 1835, left school at 14, taught himself taxidermy (starting with a pet bird), and perfected his art with specimens donated by friends.
He opened his museum in a shed behind his father's pub. It proved so popular, boosting the pub trade dramatically, that the brewery created a purpose-built museum, which Potter ran until his death in 1918.
The museum was taken over by his son-in-law, who died in 1969; it was then sold and moved first to Brighton, then to Arundel, and finally to Jamaica Inn in Cornwall. When the last owners retired, and their taxidermist, who took care of the collection, died, there was an attempt to sell the collection as a whole. But finally it was scattered, after a Bonham's auction where pieces sold for up to £20,000 to collectors from
all over the world.
The founder of the Museum of Everything, James Brett, who made his money in films and property, opened the first exhibition of the "outsider art" he collects, including work made in prisons and mental health units, last year as a fringe event for the Frieze Art Fair. It was intended to run for a fortnight but was repeatedly extended due to public interest – and the free cafe – and by the time it finally did close had attracted more than 35,000 visitors.
He intended this time to re-create the glorious chaos of Blake's studio. The artist who created the cover for the Beatles' Sergeant Pepper is a collector and hoarder on an epic scale, and the exhibition will include some of his toys, shells, advertising ephemera and giant circus banners.
"The idea of re-creating the Potter museum began as a chance remark from Peter, and it became an obsession to bring the band back together," Brett said.
"It has taken over my life. But Potter is worth it, he was a true original, and himself absolutely an outsider artist as much as a craftsman. I can tell a Potter from the work of another taxidermist at a glance across a room – he was a genius."
Phone calls were still coming in every day from Potter fanatics, he said. The three-legged pig, the two-headed lamb and the four-winged chicken are already in place, but he has despaired of getting the kittens' wedding back from the US. He still hopes the rabbits' school, and the guinea pigs playing cricket, a piece believed to be in France, may yet turn up.
Morris, who began taxidermy himself aged seven with a dead squirrel, helped by a Boys Own guide to the subject, says that Potter was a very bad taxidermist all of his life: his birds were puff-chested because he fitted the skins over the wrong size bodies, and his cats had teddy bear eyes.
But Potter's genius was in his ability to create an entire miniature world, the world of a Victorian village which he knew intimately. The pieces are obsessively detailed, and full of tiny jokes for the observant: in the squirrels' club one creature is rejoicing over a winning hand, not realising that the viewer can see his opponent's even better cards. There are cases of stuffed birds on the club walls, and paintings the size of postage stamps signed by one W Potter.
The displays were never to everyone's taste. Many thought they were grotesque and an abuse of animals, despite the poster insisting that none had been killed deliberately for the collection. The animals did not die quietly in their sleep, though: Spot the dog, owned by a friend of Potter's, killed most of the rats for the drinking den and other scenes, and when she died she was stuffed and added to the collection.
Morris robustly defends taxidermy against the political correctness which he believes helped doom the collection. "Blaming taxidermy for the large number of rare species in glass cases is as illogical as blaming undertakers for all the dead people in cemeteries."
The Museum of Everything will run at least until Christmas.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/oct/08/walter-potter-exhibition-museum-everything
Genius or grotesquery? The arrestingly strange world of Walter Potter
Seven years after it was sold and dispersed across the world, a bizarre Victorian collection is being reassembled in an exhibition co-curated by Peter Blake
The wild and eerie Victorian world of Walter Potter, where baby rabbits go to school and weep over their blotted copybooks, and where Bullingdon Club-style squirrels puff on cigars as toads play leapfrog and rat
police raid a drinking den, is being reassembled in London, seven years after his creatures were sold and scattered across the world.
The displays are being assembled at the reopened Museum of Everything, a pop-up museum in a former Victorian dairy, and later recording studio, in Primrose Hill, London.
Damien Hirst, who built his international fame on creatures such as his shark, and Sir Peter Blake, who is co-curator of the exhibition, have each lent pieces for the show. Both regard Potter as a genius, and his work as a national treasure which should have been kept together for permanent public display.
Other loans for the exhibition, opening next Wednesday, come from the comedian Harry Hill, the photographer David Bailey, other passionate private enthusiasts, and Pat Morris, a retired academic and expert on the history of taxidermy who intends to leave his own collection to a museum.
Hirst has contributed a truly Hirstian piece, called Happy Families, in which Potter has assembled natural "enemies" including cats, a dog, birds, squirrels, rats, mice and a tortoise, in a distinctly uneasy truce.
Blake's treasures include The House that Jack Built, which has a miniature hen – which Potter made by sticking feathers to a wooden mould – watching over a nest of wren's eggs, and The Babes in the Wood, another piece with a more than slightly creepy air.
Morris owns the largest piece, which was always the star attraction in the museum. The Death of Cock Robin, which displays more than 100 birds including a weeping robin widow and an owl gravedigger who has tumbled some tiny bones out of the soil while preparing space for the dead robin. It normally occupies one entire wall of Morris's guest bedroom in Ascot.
The beautifully painted backgrounds of the tableaux show the fields, woods and buildings of Bramber, the West Sussex village where Potter spent his long life. He was born in 1835, left school at 14, taught himself taxidermy (starting with a pet bird), and perfected his art with specimens donated by friends.
He opened his museum in a shed behind his father's pub. It proved so popular, boosting the pub trade dramatically, that the brewery created a purpose-built museum, which Potter ran until his death in 1918.
The museum was taken over by his son-in-law, who died in 1969; it was then sold and moved first to Brighton, then to Arundel, and finally to Jamaica Inn in Cornwall. When the last owners retired, and their taxidermist, who took care of the collection, died, there was an attempt to sell the collection as a whole. But finally it was scattered, after a Bonham's auction where pieces sold for up to £20,000 to collectors from
all over the world.
The founder of the Museum of Everything, James Brett, who made his money in films and property, opened the first exhibition of the "outsider art" he collects, including work made in prisons and mental health units, last year as a fringe event for the Frieze Art Fair. It was intended to run for a fortnight but was repeatedly extended due to public interest – and the free cafe – and by the time it finally did close had attracted more than 35,000 visitors.
He intended this time to re-create the glorious chaos of Blake's studio. The artist who created the cover for the Beatles' Sergeant Pepper is a collector and hoarder on an epic scale, and the exhibition will include some of his toys, shells, advertising ephemera and giant circus banners.
"The idea of re-creating the Potter museum began as a chance remark from Peter, and it became an obsession to bring the band back together," Brett said.
"It has taken over my life. But Potter is worth it, he was a true original, and himself absolutely an outsider artist as much as a craftsman. I can tell a Potter from the work of another taxidermist at a glance across a room – he was a genius."
Phone calls were still coming in every day from Potter fanatics, he said. The three-legged pig, the two-headed lamb and the four-winged chicken are already in place, but he has despaired of getting the kittens' wedding back from the US. He still hopes the rabbits' school, and the guinea pigs playing cricket, a piece believed to be in France, may yet turn up.
Morris, who began taxidermy himself aged seven with a dead squirrel, helped by a Boys Own guide to the subject, says that Potter was a very bad taxidermist all of his life: his birds were puff-chested because he fitted the skins over the wrong size bodies, and his cats had teddy bear eyes.
But Potter's genius was in his ability to create an entire miniature world, the world of a Victorian village which he knew intimately. The pieces are obsessively detailed, and full of tiny jokes for the observant: in the squirrels' club one creature is rejoicing over a winning hand, not realising that the viewer can see his opponent's even better cards. There are cases of stuffed birds on the club walls, and paintings the size of postage stamps signed by one W Potter.
The displays were never to everyone's taste. Many thought they were grotesque and an abuse of animals, despite the poster insisting that none had been killed deliberately for the collection. The animals did not die quietly in their sleep, though: Spot the dog, owned by a friend of Potter's, killed most of the rats for the drinking den and other scenes, and when she died she was stuffed and added to the collection.
Morris robustly defends taxidermy against the political correctness which he believes helped doom the collection. "Blaming taxidermy for the large number of rare species in glass cases is as illogical as blaming undertakers for all the dead people in cemeteries."
The Museum of Everything will run at least until Christmas.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/oct/08/walter-potter-exhibition-museum-everything
The wild and eerie Victorian world of Walter Potter, where baby rabbits go to school and weep over their blotted copybooks, and where Bullingdon Club-style squirrels puff on cigars as toads play leapfrog and rat
police raid a drinking den, is being reassembled in London, seven years after his creatures were sold and scattered across the world.
The displays are being assembled at the reopened Museum of Everything, a pop-up museum in a former Victorian dairy, and later recording studio, in Primrose Hill, London.
Damien Hirst, who built his international fame on creatures such as his shark, and Sir Peter Blake, who is co-curator of the exhibition, have each lent pieces for the show. Both regard Potter as a genius, and his work as a national treasure which should have been kept together for permanent public display.
Other loans for the exhibition, opening next Wednesday, come from the comedian Harry Hill, the photographer David Bailey, other passionate private enthusiasts, and Pat Morris, a retired academic and expert on the history of taxidermy who intends to leave his own collection to a museum.
Hirst has contributed a truly Hirstian piece, called Happy Families, in which Potter has assembled natural "enemies" including cats, a dog, birds, squirrels, rats, mice and a tortoise, in a distinctly uneasy truce.
Blake's treasures include The House that Jack Built, which has a miniature hen – which Potter made by sticking feathers to a wooden mould – watching over a nest of wren's eggs, and The Babes in the Wood, another piece with a more than slightly creepy air.
Morris owns the largest piece, which was always the star attraction in the museum. The Death of Cock Robin, which displays more than 100 birds including a weeping robin widow and an owl gravedigger who has tumbled some tiny bones out of the soil while preparing space for the dead robin. It normally occupies one entire wall of Morris's guest bedroom in Ascot.
The beautifully painted backgrounds of the tableaux show the fields, woods and buildings of Bramber, the West Sussex village where Potter spent his long life. He was born in 1835, left school at 14, taught himself taxidermy (starting with a pet bird), and perfected his art with specimens donated by friends.
He opened his museum in a shed behind his father's pub. It proved so popular, boosting the pub trade dramatically, that the brewery created a purpose-built museum, which Potter ran until his death in 1918.
The museum was taken over by his son-in-law, who died in 1969; it was then sold and moved first to Brighton, then to Arundel, and finally to Jamaica Inn in Cornwall. When the last owners retired, and their taxidermist, who took care of the collection, died, there was an attempt to sell the collection as a whole. But finally it was scattered, after a Bonham's auction where pieces sold for up to £20,000 to collectors from
all over the world.
The founder of the Museum of Everything, James Brett, who made his money in films and property, opened the first exhibition of the "outsider art" he collects, including work made in prisons and mental health units, last year as a fringe event for the Frieze Art Fair. It was intended to run for a fortnight but was repeatedly extended due to public interest – and the free cafe – and by the time it finally did close had attracted more than 35,000 visitors.
He intended this time to re-create the glorious chaos of Blake's studio. The artist who created the cover for the Beatles' Sergeant Pepper is a collector and hoarder on an epic scale, and the exhibition will include some of his toys, shells, advertising ephemera and giant circus banners.
"The idea of re-creating the Potter museum began as a chance remark from Peter, and it became an obsession to bring the band back together," Brett said.
"It has taken over my life. But Potter is worth it, he was a true original, and himself absolutely an outsider artist as much as a craftsman. I can tell a Potter from the work of another taxidermist at a glance across a room – he was a genius."
Phone calls were still coming in every day from Potter fanatics, he said. The three-legged pig, the two-headed lamb and the four-winged chicken are already in place, but he has despaired of getting the kittens' wedding back from the US. He still hopes the rabbits' school, and the guinea pigs playing cricket, a piece believed to be in France, may yet turn up.
Morris, who began taxidermy himself aged seven with a dead squirrel, helped by a Boys Own guide to the subject, says that Potter was a very bad taxidermist all of his life: his birds were puff-chested because he fitted the skins over the wrong size bodies, and his cats had teddy bear eyes.
But Potter's genius was in his ability to create an entire miniature world, the world of a Victorian village which he knew intimately. The pieces are obsessively detailed, and full of tiny jokes for the observant: in the squirrels' club one creature is rejoicing over a winning hand, not realising that the viewer can see his opponent's even better cards. There are cases of stuffed birds on the club walls, and paintings the size of postage stamps signed by one W Potter.
The displays were never to everyone's taste. Many thought they were grotesque and an abuse of animals, despite the poster insisting that none had been killed deliberately for the collection. The animals did not die quietly in their sleep, though: Spot the dog, owned by a friend of Potter's, killed most of the rats for the drinking den and other scenes, and when she died she was stuffed and added to the collection.
Morris robustly defends taxidermy against the political correctness which he believes helped doom the collection. "Blaming taxidermy for the large number of rare species in glass cases is as illogical as blaming undertakers for all the dead people in cemeteries."
The Museum of Everything will run at least until Christmas.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/oct/08/walter-potter-exhibition-museum-everything
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Sainsbury family donates £25m to British Museum
12 September 2010
Two charitable trusts established by the Sainsbury family have donated £25m to the British Museum in what is thought to be one of the biggest gifts to the arts for two decades.
The Linbury Trust, established by Conservative peer Lord Sainsbury of Preston Candover in the 1970s, will pay £12.5m to the museum over the next three years.
A further £12.5 million will come from the Monument Trust established by Lord Sainsbury's late brother Simon.
The money will go towards a major redevelopment of the London museum's facilities, helping fund a new World Conservation and Exhibitions Centre.
A spokeswoman for the museum described the donations as "incredibly generous". The gift was a vital part of a project which would "benefit future generations".
"This is an incredibly important project for the British Museum and has been planned for a long time," the spokeswoman added.
£125m project
Donations from other private donors and a £22.5m government grant are also being used to fund the project, which will feature a conservation and science centre.
The centre, which will cost more than £125m, will include a gallery to house temporary collections which can compete with other UK and international institutions.
Planning permission for the centre was granted by Camden Council in October 2009.
The building will be made of glass and traditional stone, which the museum says will blend well with its Grade I listed surroundings.
The exhibition main space will be more than 1,000 sq m (10,764 sq ft), large enough to accommodate big temporary exhibitions such as the 2007 display of Chinese terracotta warriors.
Until now these have been held in the Reading Room, resulting in controversy because the historic surroundings were obscured.
New science laboratories will be built in the centre in which exhibits can be researched and restored.
State of the art machinery will be installed to study artefacts in forensic detail.
The gift comes at a time when many cultural organisations are facing a funding squeeze amid financial cutbacks.
In 1985, Lord Sainsbury and his brothers The Hon Simon Sainsbury and Sir Timothy Sainsbury financed the construction of the Sainsbury Wing at the National Gallery, which cost a total of about £50m and opened in 1991.
Lord Sainsbury's other donations have included £10m for a recent renovation of Oxford's Ashmolean Museum and money for the Linbury studio theatre at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11274399
(Submitted by Dawn Holloway)
Two charitable trusts established by the Sainsbury family have donated £25m to the British Museum in what is thought to be one of the biggest gifts to the arts for two decades.
The Linbury Trust, established by Conservative peer Lord Sainsbury of Preston Candover in the 1970s, will pay £12.5m to the museum over the next three years.
A further £12.5 million will come from the Monument Trust established by Lord Sainsbury's late brother Simon.
The money will go towards a major redevelopment of the London museum's facilities, helping fund a new World Conservation and Exhibitions Centre.
A spokeswoman for the museum described the donations as "incredibly generous". The gift was a vital part of a project which would "benefit future generations".
"This is an incredibly important project for the British Museum and has been planned for a long time," the spokeswoman added.
£125m project
Donations from other private donors and a £22.5m government grant are also being used to fund the project, which will feature a conservation and science centre.
The centre, which will cost more than £125m, will include a gallery to house temporary collections which can compete with other UK and international institutions.
Planning permission for the centre was granted by Camden Council in October 2009.
The building will be made of glass and traditional stone, which the museum says will blend well with its Grade I listed surroundings.
The exhibition main space will be more than 1,000 sq m (10,764 sq ft), large enough to accommodate big temporary exhibitions such as the 2007 display of Chinese terracotta warriors.
Until now these have been held in the Reading Room, resulting in controversy because the historic surroundings were obscured.
New science laboratories will be built in the centre in which exhibits can be researched and restored.
State of the art machinery will be installed to study artefacts in forensic detail.
The gift comes at a time when many cultural organisations are facing a funding squeeze amid financial cutbacks.
In 1985, Lord Sainsbury and his brothers The Hon Simon Sainsbury and Sir Timothy Sainsbury financed the construction of the Sainsbury Wing at the National Gallery, which cost a total of about £50m and opened in 1991.
Lord Sainsbury's other donations have included £10m for a recent renovation of Oxford's Ashmolean Museum and money for the Linbury studio theatre at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11274399
(Submitted by Dawn Holloway)
Sainsbury family donates £25m to British Museum
12 September 2010
Two charitable trusts established by the Sainsbury family have donated £25m to the British Museum in what is thought to be one of the biggest gifts to the arts for two decades.
The Linbury Trust, established by Conservative peer Lord Sainsbury of Preston Candover in the 1970s, will pay £12.5m to the museum over the next three years.
A further £12.5 million will come from the Monument Trust established by Lord Sainsbury's late brother Simon.
The money will go towards a major redevelopment of the London museum's facilities, helping fund a new World Conservation and Exhibitions Centre.
A spokeswoman for the museum described the donations as "incredibly generous". The gift was a vital part of a project which would "benefit future generations".
"This is an incredibly important project for the British Museum and has been planned for a long time," the spokeswoman added.
£125m project
Donations from other private donors and a £22.5m government grant are also being used to fund the project, which will feature a conservation and science centre.
The centre, which will cost more than £125m, will include a gallery to house temporary collections which can compete with other UK and international institutions.
Planning permission for the centre was granted by Camden Council in October 2009.
The building will be made of glass and traditional stone, which the museum says will blend well with its Grade I listed surroundings.
The exhibition main space will be more than 1,000 sq m (10,764 sq ft), large enough to accommodate big temporary exhibitions such as the 2007 display of Chinese terracotta warriors.
Until now these have been held in the Reading Room, resulting in controversy because the historic surroundings were obscured.
New science laboratories will be built in the centre in which exhibits can be researched and restored.
State of the art machinery will be installed to study artefacts in forensic detail.
The gift comes at a time when many cultural organisations are facing a funding squeeze amid financial cutbacks.
In 1985, Lord Sainsbury and his brothers The Hon Simon Sainsbury and Sir Timothy Sainsbury financed the construction of the Sainsbury Wing at the National Gallery, which cost a total of about £50m and opened in 1991.
Lord Sainsbury's other donations have included £10m for a recent renovation of Oxford's Ashmolean Museum and money for the Linbury studio theatre at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11274399
(Submitted by Dawn Holloway)
Two charitable trusts established by the Sainsbury family have donated £25m to the British Museum in what is thought to be one of the biggest gifts to the arts for two decades.
The Linbury Trust, established by Conservative peer Lord Sainsbury of Preston Candover in the 1970s, will pay £12.5m to the museum over the next three years.
A further £12.5 million will come from the Monument Trust established by Lord Sainsbury's late brother Simon.
The money will go towards a major redevelopment of the London museum's facilities, helping fund a new World Conservation and Exhibitions Centre.
A spokeswoman for the museum described the donations as "incredibly generous". The gift was a vital part of a project which would "benefit future generations".
"This is an incredibly important project for the British Museum and has been planned for a long time," the spokeswoman added.
£125m project
Donations from other private donors and a £22.5m government grant are also being used to fund the project, which will feature a conservation and science centre.
The centre, which will cost more than £125m, will include a gallery to house temporary collections which can compete with other UK and international institutions.
Planning permission for the centre was granted by Camden Council in October 2009.
The building will be made of glass and traditional stone, which the museum says will blend well with its Grade I listed surroundings.
The exhibition main space will be more than 1,000 sq m (10,764 sq ft), large enough to accommodate big temporary exhibitions such as the 2007 display of Chinese terracotta warriors.
Until now these have been held in the Reading Room, resulting in controversy because the historic surroundings were obscured.
New science laboratories will be built in the centre in which exhibits can be researched and restored.
State of the art machinery will be installed to study artefacts in forensic detail.
The gift comes at a time when many cultural organisations are facing a funding squeeze amid financial cutbacks.
In 1985, Lord Sainsbury and his brothers The Hon Simon Sainsbury and Sir Timothy Sainsbury financed the construction of the Sainsbury Wing at the National Gallery, which cost a total of about £50m and opened in 1991.
Lord Sainsbury's other donations have included £10m for a recent renovation of Oxford's Ashmolean Museum and money for the Linbury studio theatre at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11274399
(Submitted by Dawn Holloway)
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
85-Million-Year-Old Sea Monster Re-Explored
RIGHT: The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County's mosasaur fossil contains four slabs, which make up a virtually complete, 20-foot specimen. Pictured here is the skull portion of the specimen. Credit: Courtesy of the Dinosaur Institute, NHM.by Staff Writers
Los Angeles CA (SPX) Aug 17, 2010
One of the ocean's most formidable marine predators, the marine mosasaur Platecarpus, lived in the Cretaceous Period some 85 million years ago and was thought to have swum like an eel. That theory is debunked in a new paper published in the journal PLoS ONE.
An international team of scientists have reconceived the animal's morphology, or body plan, based on a spectacular specimen housed at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.
The paper was co-authored by a team of four scientists: Johan Lindgren (Lund University, Lund, Sweden), Michael W. Caldwell, Takuya Konishi (University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada), and Luis M. Chiappe, Director of the Natural History Museum's Dinosaur Institute.
The mosasaur specimen was discovered in Kansas in 1969, and acquired by the NHM shortly thereafter. It contains four slabs, which make up a virtually complete, 20-foot specimen. Dr. Chiappe spurred a modern preparation of the specimen, and assembled the paper's research team.
"It is one of several exceptional fossils that will be featured in Dinosaur Mysteries," said Chiappe, curator of the 15,000-square foot landmark exhibition that opens at the museum in 2011.
In the meantime, the fossil will be temporarily on display at the museum's Dino Lab, a working lab located on the second floor of the museum, where paleontologists prepare fossils in full view of the public.
The specimen is "the finest preserved mosasaur in existence," according to Dr. Johan Lindgren, lead author of the published study. It retains traces of a partial body outline, putative skin color markings, external scales, a downturned tail, branching bronchial tubes, and stomach contents (fish).
Using it, the scientists demonstrate that a streamlined body plan and crescent-shaped tail fin were already well established in Platecarpus, and that these key features evolved very early in the evolution of mosasaurs. Noting the highly specialized tail fin, the new study assert that mosasaurs were better swimmers than previously thought - and that they swam more like sharks than eels.
The findings underscore how these adaptations for fully aquatic existence evolved rapidly and convergently in several groups of Mesozoic marine reptiles, as well as in extant whales. "This fossil shows evolution in action, how a successful design was developed time after time by different groups of organisms adapting to life in similar environments," said Chiappe.
"It highlights once again the potential for new discoveries to challenge well-established interpretations about dinosaurs and other animals that lived with them."
"From this beautifully preserved specimen it seems that advanced, shark like swimming began in mosasaurs millions of years earlier than we previously thought," said Dr. Kevin Padian, a paleontologist at the University of California, Berkeley, not involved in the paper.
"This study is the best possible proof that active research by curators and staff is the most essential component of a museum dedicated to educating the public."
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/85_Million_Year_Old_Sea_Monster_Re_Explored_999.html
Friday, July 2, 2010
Of Monsters and Men
The museum's website: http://www.skrimsli.is/index.php?Itemid=60
Of Monsters and Men
Ásta Andrésdóttir
27/06/2010
Last summer, I travelled for the first time to the West Fjords, that marvellous cluster of rough and rugged fjords. One of the destinations was Bíldudalur, on the southern side of Arnarfjördur fjord.
This village of 200 is best known for three things. Firstly, green beans – an Icelandic Sunday lamb essential – used to be manufactured here. Secondly, a singer has turned his home into a shrine to Icelandic pop music. Then there's The Icelandic Sea Monster Museum, which funnily enough, is located in the old green bean factory. Arnarfjördur fjord has in fact established a reputation as being the habitat of sea monsters, with more than 200 documented sightings through the centuries.
The museum, which opened its doors last year, is a vast black space, broken up in the centre by a tall glass case containing books, photographs, letters, seashells and other items related to the theme. Plasma screens on the walls show interviews with people describing their monster sightings, mixed in with eerie images of an angry sea.
The museum’s pride is a sizeable interactive glass table containing an old style map of the fjord. By moving a glass sphere over the place names, somewhat like playing spirit of the glass, related monster stories pop up.
Visiting Arnarfjördur bore a special significance to me. On a farm in a secluded valley overlooking the fjord, my late grandmother was born and raised. I felt myself getting closer to my roots.
Excited as a child on Christmas Morning, I slid the sphere across the map, placing it over her valley. Sure enough, an account of a monster sighting appears on the screen.
I could hardly believe my eyes when I realized that the eyewitness was her brother. My granduncle.
It was the year 1927 and he was fourteen years old. On a dusky autumn afternoon, he noticed a maroon-coloured beast standing on the beach. It was at least ten feet long and the height of a calf. Its head was large and ugly; it had huge protruding eyes and a tangled mane, resembling that of a lion. The beast appeared to be covered in seashells; its arched back was wide and cylindrical; its large tail narrowed downwards. It was turned away from him, snooping about in the seaweed. But when he threw a rock in its direction, it slowly turned around, raising its ugly head and staring at him.
Beholding its jaws, he panicked and ran all the way home.
When he got home and told the shocking tale, an old man gathered that this had been a malicious sheep-like creature called fjörulalli, infamous for trying to drive humans into the sea.
Luckily enough, my great uncle managed to escape.
Heading towards our next destination, my grandmother’s valley, the sea monsters remained on my mind, especially the one that my uncle claimed to have seen. While realizing that these are mythical creatures, deep down inside I can’t help believing in their existence.
To me, the West Fjords are a place where anything can happen.
http://www.icelandreview.com/icelandreview/daily_life/?cat_id=16568&ew_0_a_id=364245
------
Of Monsters and Men
Ásta Andrésdóttir
27/06/2010
Last summer, I travelled for the first time to the West Fjords, that marvellous cluster of rough and rugged fjords. One of the destinations was Bíldudalur, on the southern side of Arnarfjördur fjord.
This village of 200 is best known for three things. Firstly, green beans – an Icelandic Sunday lamb essential – used to be manufactured here. Secondly, a singer has turned his home into a shrine to Icelandic pop music. Then there's The Icelandic Sea Monster Museum, which funnily enough, is located in the old green bean factory. Arnarfjördur fjord has in fact established a reputation as being the habitat of sea monsters, with more than 200 documented sightings through the centuries.
The museum, which opened its doors last year, is a vast black space, broken up in the centre by a tall glass case containing books, photographs, letters, seashells and other items related to the theme. Plasma screens on the walls show interviews with people describing their monster sightings, mixed in with eerie images of an angry sea.
The museum’s pride is a sizeable interactive glass table containing an old style map of the fjord. By moving a glass sphere over the place names, somewhat like playing spirit of the glass, related monster stories pop up.
Visiting Arnarfjördur bore a special significance to me. On a farm in a secluded valley overlooking the fjord, my late grandmother was born and raised. I felt myself getting closer to my roots.
Excited as a child on Christmas Morning, I slid the sphere across the map, placing it over her valley. Sure enough, an account of a monster sighting appears on the screen.
I could hardly believe my eyes when I realized that the eyewitness was her brother. My granduncle.
It was the year 1927 and he was fourteen years old. On a dusky autumn afternoon, he noticed a maroon-coloured beast standing on the beach. It was at least ten feet long and the height of a calf. Its head was large and ugly; it had huge protruding eyes and a tangled mane, resembling that of a lion. The beast appeared to be covered in seashells; its arched back was wide and cylindrical; its large tail narrowed downwards. It was turned away from him, snooping about in the seaweed. But when he threw a rock in its direction, it slowly turned around, raising its ugly head and staring at him.
Beholding its jaws, he panicked and ran all the way home.
When he got home and told the shocking tale, an old man gathered that this had been a malicious sheep-like creature called fjörulalli, infamous for trying to drive humans into the sea.
Luckily enough, my great uncle managed to escape.
Heading towards our next destination, my grandmother’s valley, the sea monsters remained on my mind, especially the one that my uncle claimed to have seen. While realizing that these are mythical creatures, deep down inside I can’t help believing in their existence.
To me, the West Fjords are a place where anything can happen.
http://www.icelandreview.com/icelandreview/daily_life/?cat_id=16568&ew_0_a_id=364245
------
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Ray's mythical monsters find a home
Wed 30 Jun 2010The life's work of special effects animator Ray Harryhausen is to have a permanent new home.
The collection will be housed at the National Media Museum in Bradford.
Harryhausen made his name by developing animated creatures based on legends and classical mythology.
The Ray Harryhausen Collection contains drawings, paintings and storyboards, together with his animation models and the original moulds used to make them.
Examples include the skeletons from Jason and the Argonauts and the Medusa and the Kraken from Clash of the Titans.
Harryhausen, who has just turned 90, said: "I am so very pleased and honoured that my Foundation will not only be looking after my collection of 90 years but will also be ensuring that it is seen by as wide an audience as possible. It is also gratifying that the National Media Museum will, in conjunction with the Foundation, be storing and preserving my Collection for the foreseeable future."
An exhibition called Ray Harryhausen - Myths and Legends has also opened at the London Film Museum and will run for 12 months.
http://web.orange.co.uk/article/film/ray-harryhausen-collection
Monday, June 14, 2010
Museum staging a monster exhibition
Saturday 12th June 2010
TERRIFYING serpents, dragons and gods will be brought to life in an exhibition on the part played by rivers in folklore.
Rivers, Myths and Monsters opens today at the Old Fulling Mill Museum of Archaeology, in Durham City, with art inspired by chilling and exciting tales set in the world’s waterways.
Rivers have inspired myths around the world, from the local legend of the Lambton Worm, with a model of the monstrous serpent decorated by members of the 10th Durham Brownies (St Margaret’s), to pendants and plaques from China which tell the story of river carp that magically transform into dragons.
There are also tales from India, where Krishna battled the many-headed serpent, Kaliya, and Egypt, where figurines and amulets illustrate the story of the search by the goddess Isis for the body of her husband, Osiris, which had been hidden in the Nile by the evil Seth.
Madeline Betts, of Durham University, said: “Down the ages, rivers have inspired myths and monster tales around the globe. This exhibition tells their stories.
“There are games and many ways to interact with the objects on show, most of which have never been on display and are kept in the Oriental Museum’s Store, so this is a fun and engaging place to visit for all the family!”
The exhibition runs until September 5.
The Old Fulling Mill is open from 11am to 4pm daily and admission is £1 for adults, 50p for children and over-60s, or free to students and the underfives.
For more details, visit durham.ac.uk/fullingmill or call 0191-334-1823.
http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/local/durham/8216251.Museum_staging_a_monster_exhibition/?ref=rss
TERRIFYING serpents, dragons and gods will be brought to life in an exhibition on the part played by rivers in folklore.
Rivers, Myths and Monsters opens today at the Old Fulling Mill Museum of Archaeology, in Durham City, with art inspired by chilling and exciting tales set in the world’s waterways.
Rivers have inspired myths around the world, from the local legend of the Lambton Worm, with a model of the monstrous serpent decorated by members of the 10th Durham Brownies (St Margaret’s), to pendants and plaques from China which tell the story of river carp that magically transform into dragons.
There are also tales from India, where Krishna battled the many-headed serpent, Kaliya, and Egypt, where figurines and amulets illustrate the story of the search by the goddess Isis for the body of her husband, Osiris, which had been hidden in the Nile by the evil Seth.
Madeline Betts, of Durham University, said: “Down the ages, rivers have inspired myths and monster tales around the globe. This exhibition tells their stories.
“There are games and many ways to interact with the objects on show, most of which have never been on display and are kept in the Oriental Museum’s Store, so this is a fun and engaging place to visit for all the family!”
The exhibition runs until September 5.
The Old Fulling Mill is open from 11am to 4pm daily and admission is £1 for adults, 50p for children and over-60s, or free to students and the underfives.
For more details, visit durham.ac.uk/fullingmill or call 0191-334-1823.
http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/local/durham/8216251.Museum_staging_a_monster_exhibition/?ref=rss
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Giant herring found in Sweden
Posted Wed May 12, 2010 12:33pm AEST
A giant herring measuring 3.5 metres has been discovered off Sweden's western coast - the first such fish found in the Scandinavian country in more than 130 years, a maritime museum says.
The regalecus glesne, known as the king of herrings or giant oarfish, was found dead in the small fishing village of Bovallstrand on Sweden's west coast, about 90 kilometres from the Norwegian border.
Kurt Ove Eriksson, the passer-by who found the specimen, said he saw something floating down by the water.
"At first we thought it was a big piece of plastic. But then we saw an eye," he said.
"I went down to check and saw that it was this extremely strange fish."
The House of the Sea museum in Lysekil, where the fish was taken, says the rarely seen regalecus can grow up to 12 metres.
"The last time we saw a king of herrings in Sweden was in 1879," the museum said.
"We don't know much about the species... but believe it lives in deep waters, at least one kilometre deep, and many believe it's at the origin of the sea serpent myth."
The dead fish, which was frozen at the museum, had a deep cut through its body and was missing its beautiful, typical back fin, the museum said, adding the fish might be added to an exhibit on sea monsters planned later this year.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/05/12/2897292.htm
A giant herring measuring 3.5 metres has been discovered off Sweden's western coast - the first such fish found in the Scandinavian country in more than 130 years, a maritime museum says.
The regalecus glesne, known as the king of herrings or giant oarfish, was found dead in the small fishing village of Bovallstrand on Sweden's west coast, about 90 kilometres from the Norwegian border.
Kurt Ove Eriksson, the passer-by who found the specimen, said he saw something floating down by the water.
"At first we thought it was a big piece of plastic. But then we saw an eye," he said.
"I went down to check and saw that it was this extremely strange fish."
The House of the Sea museum in Lysekil, where the fish was taken, says the rarely seen regalecus can grow up to 12 metres.
"The last time we saw a king of herrings in Sweden was in 1879," the museum said.
"We don't know much about the species... but believe it lives in deep waters, at least one kilometre deep, and many believe it's at the origin of the sea serpent myth."
The dead fish, which was frozen at the museum, had a deep cut through its body and was missing its beautiful, typical back fin, the museum said, adding the fish might be added to an exhibit on sea monsters planned later this year.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/05/12/2897292.htm
Friday, April 30, 2010
Real Dragon Fossils on Display in China
Some fossils, named the “China dragon fossils”, were recently exhibited in the Xinwei Ancient Life Fossils Museum in Anshun, Guizhou.When archeologists first stripped the clay off the fossil, they found the dragon had a pair of horns above its head and the shape of the dragon was very like the legendary animal often described in books and stories.
Dragons have often appeared in Chinese legends. The dragon with two horns on its head is regarded as a totem. The totem was first invented by Chinese ancestors and worshipped by the Chinese people. Therefore Chinese people are also called the “descendents of the dragon”.
For a long time, scientists thought that the dragon was a fictional animal existing only in stories.
The dragon fossil was found in Guanling County, Anshun City, in 1996, and has been kept in a good condition. It is measured 7.6 meters long. Its head is 76 centimeters long and the neck is 54 centimeters long. The body is 2.7 meters in length and 68 centimeters in width, and the tail is 3.7 meters long.
The dragon’s head is in a triangle shape. Its mouth is 43 centimeters long. The widest part of the head is 32 centimeters long. The horns project from the widest part of the head, and are symmetrical and 27 centimeters long. They are a little bit curved and tilted, which makes the fossil look very much like the legendary dragon.
The China dragon was a reptile animal living in the ocean in Triassic Period about 200 million years ago. It was an amphibian. It spent most of its time living in water, although sometimes it walked on land. It also laid eggs on land. The animal lived on fish and small reptile animals.
This is the first time that China found a dragon fossil with a pair of horns. Its discovery provides some evidence to prove that dragons might really have horns. The fossil provides important scientific information for people to trace the origin of the Chinese legendary dragon.
By Sun Tzu on 29-06-2007
http://www.weirdasianews.com/2007/06/29/real-dragon-fossils-on-display-in-china/
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Victorian collection raises £100,000 at Dorchester auction
9:00am Thursday 15th April 2010By Joanna Davis
PEOPLE with a penchant for the bizarre, the unusual and the downright grotesque crowded out an auction house for a sale with a difference.
They came from all over the country to buy their very own oddities from an eclectic Victorian collection.
Objects from a recession-hit museum on the Isle of Wight went under the hammer at The Grove sales room of Duke’s of Dorchester.
A winged cat, one of the highlights of the auction, was the subject of a price war from bidders.
The 1860s stuffed feline, primed for flight with bird wings fixed to its back, made £2,800.
A shrunken human head believed to be a genuine Javara Indian head of a man from Ecuador fetched £2,400.
An elephant-headed boy in a red velvet coffin, reputedly found living wild on the banks of the Congo, went for £1,900.
Torture items from the Brading Collection – formerly the Isle of Wight Waxworks – were particularly popular with bargain hunters.
Paul Birch successfully bid £1,100 for a man trap, complete with a life-size human ankle dripping with fake blood.
He said: “I saw one like this on TV and I thought ‘I’ve got to have one of those’.
“I think it’s just what every home needs and I’m going to put it in the living room where everybody can see it. This has been a really fun auction with a lot of good characters, normally people at auctions are very hoity-toity.”
Brave Paul, of Portsmouth, also bought a scold’s bridle for £300 and handed it over to his girlfriend Tegwen Owen.
The scold’s bridle, or brank, was an implement designed to be fitted on to a female head, apparently for the punishment of nagging women.
Museum owner Robert Ball also auctioned off the collection’s main draw – its taxidermy section.
A komodo dragon went for £1,200, while Battling Bruno – a brown bear wearing boxing gloves – went for £1,000.
Bruno was said to have fought all comers at rodeos throughout the mid-West and was stuffed when he died by request of Queen Victoria.
The stuffed animals were thought to have been collected by Professor Copperthwaite in the 1800s.
The sale fetched more than £100,000 and attracted around 300 people.
http://www.dorsetecho.co.uk/news/8099286.Victorian_collection_raises___100_000_at_Dorchester_auction/
(Submitted by Mark North)
Monday, April 12, 2010
Stuffed animals to be sold at auction
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/7578476/Stuffed-animals-to-be-sold-at-auction.html
Stuffed animals to be sold at auction
Published: 9:54AM BST 11 Apr 2010
A collection of bizarre stuffed animals including a unicorn, flying cat, yeti, and other curious creatures purportedly discovered by a Victorian adventurer are to be sold at auction. The fictional menagerie of deceased critters also boasts an extended sausage dog, furry fish, mermaid and a bizarre bat-like winged beast with webbed feet.
They formed part of a museum of taxidermy that has closed and now are to go under the hammer. They were billed in the 19th century as having been brought to the UK by fictional adventurer Professor Copperthwaite.
Some Victorians might even have believed these impossible creatures existed because some, like the Siamese sheep, were real.Others such as the Jackalope - a nearly extinct antlered species of rabbit "found almost exclusively on the high plains of Wyoming" - were not. The mermaid was said to have been purchased from a man in Calcutta from a Japanese sailor and the unicorn is labelled "Monoceros unicornis.
"And the "cheasant" or "phicken" was said to be a cross between a domestic fowl and ornamental pheasant. The 7ft yeti was given the authoritative-sounding name of Yeti Gigantes Abomanalis, or abominable snowman. This example was said to have been discovered entombed in a crevasse in which he had fallen on Nehru, close to the border with Azerbaijan.
The museum on the Isle of Wight where the stuffed creatures were exhibited was called the Brading Experience and has closed due to lack of visitors. Rupert Perry-Warnes, from Duke's auction house in Dorchester, is selling the bizarre creatures at a sale on April 13 along with more normal stuffed animals. He said: "We are selling the animals without reserves and they must all go. We have real animals in the sale but also these peculiar fictional ones.
"They were said to have been discovered by a Professor Copperthwaite and during the 19th century people might well have believed them.
"There is a two headed sheep and a Siamese sheep which were real, so the others might not have looked too out of place.
"They are well put together so you can understand why people might have been fooled.
"They were items that Victorians could have boasted about owning because no one else would have had such things.
"All the animals must be sold, so there are no reserves. The strange webb-footed creature we estimate at up to 500 pounds, but we just don't know about the others."
Auction catalogue - http://www.dukes-auctions.com/Catalogues/pf130410/index.html
Stuffed animals to be sold at auction
Published: 9:54AM BST 11 Apr 2010
A collection of bizarre stuffed animals including a unicorn, flying cat, yeti, and other curious creatures purportedly discovered by a Victorian adventurer are to be sold at auction. The fictional menagerie of deceased critters also boasts an extended sausage dog, furry fish, mermaid and a bizarre bat-like winged beast with webbed feet.
They formed part of a museum of taxidermy that has closed and now are to go under the hammer. They were billed in the 19th century as having been brought to the UK by fictional adventurer Professor Copperthwaite.
Some Victorians might even have believed these impossible creatures existed because some, like the Siamese sheep, were real.Others such as the Jackalope - a nearly extinct antlered species of rabbit "found almost exclusively on the high plains of Wyoming" - were not. The mermaid was said to have been purchased from a man in Calcutta from a Japanese sailor and the unicorn is labelled "Monoceros unicornis.
"And the "cheasant" or "phicken" was said to be a cross between a domestic fowl and ornamental pheasant. The 7ft yeti was given the authoritative-sounding name of Yeti Gigantes Abomanalis, or abominable snowman. This example was said to have been discovered entombed in a crevasse in which he had fallen on Nehru, close to the border with Azerbaijan.
The museum on the Isle of Wight where the stuffed creatures were exhibited was called the Brading Experience and has closed due to lack of visitors. Rupert Perry-Warnes, from Duke's auction house in Dorchester, is selling the bizarre creatures at a sale on April 13 along with more normal stuffed animals. He said: "We are selling the animals without reserves and they must all go. We have real animals in the sale but also these peculiar fictional ones.
"They were said to have been discovered by a Professor Copperthwaite and during the 19th century people might well have believed them.
"There is a two headed sheep and a Siamese sheep which were real, so the others might not have looked too out of place.
"They are well put together so you can understand why people might have been fooled.
"They were items that Victorians could have boasted about owning because no one else would have had such things.
"All the animals must be sold, so there are no reserves. The strange webb-footed creature we estimate at up to 500 pounds, but we just don't know about the others."
Auction catalogue - http://www.dukes-auctions.com/Catalogues/pf130410/index.html
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Giant beetle was shot down by Victorian insect collector
RIGHT: Goliath beetles belong to the scarab family and are one of the largest insects on Earth, growing up to 4.5 inches long and weighing as much as 3.5 ounces. Photo: PAA beetle the size of a bird was shot out of sky by a Victorian insect collector, museum experts discovered.
Published: 2:46AM GMT
11 Mar 2010
The Goliath beetle, from Africa, is housed at London's Natural History Museum.
Staff at the museum became puzzled by small circular holes in the giant bug's tough carapace.
But it was only when cameras started rolling for a BBC documentary on the museum that the mystery was solved.
Forensic scientist Heather Bonney confirmed the beetle had been shot.
Her investigation identified entry and exit wounds, and X-rays revealed a shotgun pellet still inside the the body.
The positioning of the wounds showed the beetle was in flight when it was bagged, but the pellets hit the creature's back and not its underside.
Experts think it must have been performing one of the high aerobatic displays that make Goliath beetles notoriously difficult to catch.
Beetle curator Max Barclay said: ''Our collections are full of mysteries and every year scientists are discovering more about them and using them as evidence to help understand the world around us.
''The number of new discoveries just waiting to be made in these collections is astronomical, and every one of the museum's 70 million specimens has a story to tell.''
Goliath beetles belong to the scarab family and are one of the largest insects on Earth, growing up to 4.5 inches long and weighing as much as 3.5 ounces.
The Natural History Museum specimen is 3.9 inches long and described as being about the size of ''a large sparrow or small blackbird''.
The first episode of the six part documentary Museum of Life will be shown on BBC2 on Thursday, March 18.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/7418926/Giant-beetle-was-shot-down-by-Victorian-insect-collector.html
Mary Rose's dog unveiled for the first time
The only female crew member of The Mary Rose is to go on display after years of painstaking reconstruction - a two-year-old mongrel called Hatch.
By Chris Irvine
Published: 7:30AM GMT 11 Mar 2010
The 16th century sea dog acquired the nickname after divers discovered her remains near the sliding hatch door of the ill-fated ship's carpenter's cabin, where she had lain since it sank in 1545.
Hatch's skeleton will be on display at this year's Crufts as the special guest of the Kennel Club, along with a selection of other Tudor artefacts.
The mongrel was most likely on board as the ship's ratter - superstitious Tudor seamen did not have cats on board as they were thought to bring bad luck. According to experts, analysis of Hatch's skeleton suggests she spent most of her life within the confines of the ship.
"We are delighted to bring Hatch, the world's oldest lost sea dog, to the world's premier dog show, so that visitors can meet an ancestor of their much loved pets," said John Lippiett, Chief Executive of the Mary Rose Trust and Hatch's guardian.
"Hatch is just one of 19,000 extraordinary Tudor treasures recovered with the wreck of the Mary Rose, but she has never been on display in Portsmouth simply because we have not had the room."
Following her appearance at the annual dog show, Hatch will finally return home to Portsmouth where she will be displayed in the Mary Rose Museum.
Caroline Kisko, Communications Director of the Kennel Club, said: "It is fantastic to host Hatch before she finally returns home. She is undoubtedly the oldest, most unusual and most historically important exhibit that we have ever had at DFS Crufts and her tragic story is bound to fascinate visitors. We are delighted to have her with us - after nearly 500 years of loyal service she is due a little 'shore leave'!"
The sinking of Henry VIII's flagship the Mary Rose has always remained a mystery. Research has suggested that the warship sank when it performed a sharp turn during a battle with the French and heeled so steeply the water flooded through its open gun ports.
In 2008, experts suggested that the gun ports may have been open because of a major misunderstanding between the ship's captain Admiral George Carew and his Spanish-speaking crew. The sinking of the ship resulted in the loss of almost 500 lives.
The wreck was found in the 1830s but lost again as The Solent silted up. It was not rediscovered until 1967.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturenews/7412865/Mary-Roses-dog-unveiled-for-the-first-time.html
By Chris Irvine
Published: 7:30AM GMT 11 Mar 2010
The 16th century sea dog acquired the nickname after divers discovered her remains near the sliding hatch door of the ill-fated ship's carpenter's cabin, where she had lain since it sank in 1545.
Hatch's skeleton will be on display at this year's Crufts as the special guest of the Kennel Club, along with a selection of other Tudor artefacts.
The mongrel was most likely on board as the ship's ratter - superstitious Tudor seamen did not have cats on board as they were thought to bring bad luck. According to experts, analysis of Hatch's skeleton suggests she spent most of her life within the confines of the ship.
"We are delighted to bring Hatch, the world's oldest lost sea dog, to the world's premier dog show, so that visitors can meet an ancestor of their much loved pets," said John Lippiett, Chief Executive of the Mary Rose Trust and Hatch's guardian.
"Hatch is just one of 19,000 extraordinary Tudor treasures recovered with the wreck of the Mary Rose, but she has never been on display in Portsmouth simply because we have not had the room."
Following her appearance at the annual dog show, Hatch will finally return home to Portsmouth where she will be displayed in the Mary Rose Museum.
Caroline Kisko, Communications Director of the Kennel Club, said: "It is fantastic to host Hatch before she finally returns home. She is undoubtedly the oldest, most unusual and most historically important exhibit that we have ever had at DFS Crufts and her tragic story is bound to fascinate visitors. We are delighted to have her with us - after nearly 500 years of loyal service she is due a little 'shore leave'!"
The sinking of Henry VIII's flagship the Mary Rose has always remained a mystery. Research has suggested that the warship sank when it performed a sharp turn during a battle with the French and heeled so steeply the water flooded through its open gun ports.
In 2008, experts suggested that the gun ports may have been open because of a major misunderstanding between the ship's captain Admiral George Carew and his Spanish-speaking crew. The sinking of the ship resulted in the loss of almost 500 lives.
The wreck was found in the 1830s but lost again as The Solent silted up. It was not rediscovered until 1967.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturenews/7412865/Mary-Roses-dog-unveiled-for-the-first-time.html
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
'Old Baldy' horse head going back up in Philly
Mar 8, 11:34 PM EST
PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- A museum in Philadelphia will once again showcase the head of Old Baldy, the horse Gen. George Meade rode during many of the Civil War's most infamous battles.
The warhorse's preserved head was the subject of a battle between two city museums that both claimed ownership.
A deal has been reached that allows the Grand Army of the Republic Museum and the Civil War Museum to share Old Baldy. The head could arrive at the Grand Army museum this month.
The Civil War Museum closed in 2008 but plans to reopen in 2015. Other items in its collection have been sent to several area museums.
Old Baldy was considered a Union hero after surviving the battles of Antietam and Gettysburg and soldiering on after being shot in battle many times.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_ODD_OLD_BALDY
PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- A museum in Philadelphia will once again showcase the head of Old Baldy, the horse Gen. George Meade rode during many of the Civil War's most infamous battles.
The warhorse's preserved head was the subject of a battle between two city museums that both claimed ownership.
A deal has been reached that allows the Grand Army of the Republic Museum and the Civil War Museum to share Old Baldy. The head could arrive at the Grand Army museum this month.
The Civil War Museum closed in 2008 but plans to reopen in 2015. Other items in its collection have been sent to several area museums.
Old Baldy was considered a Union hero after surviving the battles of Antietam and Gettysburg and soldiering on after being shot in battle many times.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_ODD_OLD_BALDY
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