UCL Museums & Collections Blog

No they’re flatworms. Boom boom. Apologies for the awful pun but worm based-jokes are thin on the ground unlike earthworms which are thin and in the ground. Oh dear. This post is a continuation of the occasional series highlighting objects from the stores and recently I’ve turned my attention to Flatworms. (more…)

Marking objects with accession numbers

There is a legend that when every object in a collection has been given a unique accession number, its curators will be freed of the shackles of performance indicators and documentation plans and finally achieve a state of nirvana. There’s lots of self-help guidance out there, of course (deep breathing exercises optional) to help us achieve this goal, including information on how and when to number objects. The sensible way, according to the Collections Link’s subject factsheet, is to give objects a running number, or, if you must, a number representing the accession year and then a running number. So surely that’s what everybody does, right? Wrong! (more…)

The Grant Museum, technically, is about 185 years old, but one year ago today we opened the doors to our newest manifestation, in the Rockefeller Building’s former medical library; one of the grandest spaces at UCL. Here are some highlights from our first year.

The year in numbers
12884 visitors during normal opening hours
11010 participants in our events
6901 objects accessioned
3121 university students in museum classes
1719 school and FE students in museum classes
96 blog posts
22 specimens of the week
9 journal articles and book chapters published by staff
11 objects acquired
4 co-curated exhibitions
2 floods
Half a dodo went on display (really several bits of several dodos.) (more…)

Storage cupboard with solender boxes that house mounted prints and drawings

Written by Sandra DiRosa

Today marks my fifth day as an intern for UCL Art Museum and although it sounds a little farfetched, I have almost learned far more interesting things in four days than I have learned in three years of university schooling. Instead of learning about art, I am experiencing it up close…something most art history majors dream about! Growing up in New York, the center of the art world, museums were my favorite place to go and interested me far more than any movie, television show or book did. Although I just started working at UCL Art Museum, I have been in London since mid-January and in the time between then and about a week ago my time was occupied by classes. My “Contemporary British Art and Design” class that is offered through my program brought me to numerous museums and galleries around London. I have become fascinated by the curatorial aspect of art and have seen a wide array of styles and set ups: from the British Museum to the White Cube to the London Transport Museum. My interest in museum work has only become greater and now, I am getting a behind the scenes look into a fascinating museum: something I’ve dreamt about my entire life. Welcome to my experience here at UCL! (more…)

This is the tale of two non-discoveries. More accurately one non-discovery and one discovery of something not sought.

I often dream of thylacines and I often dream of the Grant Museum, but only once have I dreamt of both together, and that was this week which is apt as it’s Australia Day today. On this occasion in bed I jumped sharply into consciousness as it occurred to me that a specimen labelled as a brushtail possum baby could in fact be a mis-labelled thylacine. Possums, though wonderful creatures in the wild, are the ubiquitous pest of Australian towns, playing a similar role to racoons in the US. Thylacines, on the other hand, are a much celebrated (at least by us) extinct marsupial carnivore – the difference in rarity of the two in museum collections is stark. I developed an image in my mind of the specimen in question and convinced myself that it had been mis-identified. The image in my mind was in fact a mental blurring of the famous pup at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, and the specimen at the Grant Museum, pictured here. (more…)

Last week we kicked off the Grant Museum’s Humnanimals Season with one of our ever-popular film nights – Under the Caribbean (1954). Humanimals Season is all about the interactions between the lives of animals and humans, investigating human concepts in the animal world, and animals venturing into the human world. Dr Joe Cain, the stalwart presenter of GMZ film nights (and Head of UCL Science and Technology) had been insisting that we showed this 1950s underwater documentary for years.

I must admit, I hadn’t watched it, but my gut reaction was that our audience relies on us to show classic films, with a link to natural history that they will enjoy watching – many people enjoy the camp, slightly ridiculous productions like Tarzan and The Blob. “An out-dated documentary is surely a bit dry?”, I would say to Joe. He would tell me that it was ground-breaking for the genre and had heaps of never-before seen footage. “Hmmm”, I would say, “it’s just doesn’t sound silly enough”.

Boy, was I wrong. (more…)

If you’re anything like me the most infuriating thing about a delayed or cancelled bus, train or plane is not knowing why said mode of transport was delayed. If my bus was cancelled because a wheel was about to fall off then, hey, I’m happy to wait a bit longer if it means I won’t be getting on a bus that might tip over. But if it’s cancelled because somebody hadn’t realised that four buses were sent out at exactly the same time then, well I’d still be annoyed but less so than just standing in the cold for forty minutes with no explanation. So I’d like to take the opportunity to explain why the Grant Museum still isn’t fully accessible yet.

As you may know we had an extended closure period over Christmas. This was to install glass to the cases around the wall and lighting inside the cases. We’d originally had this planned for the opening in March but due to truly tragic circumstances this didn’t come to pass so we went with PLAN B which was to cover the cases with perspex. This wasn’t an ideal interim situation as it looked a bit unsightly, attracted dust and was inconvenient to get in and out of. Fortunately, our visitors didn’t seemed to mind too much but it was a situation we were keen to improve for access to specimens, security and also for aesthetics. So this is now the second attempt to install glass doors in the museum. It is not an easy space to work with, there are listing considerations and every single alcove in the museum is a slightly different width and height so each door is bespoke to a single alcove. We hate to inconvenience visitors to the museum and planned with all the contractors involved to close for the shortest amount of time possible- hence the prolonged Christmas closure. However, due to circumstances beyond our control the work was delayed by one set of contractors by a week. We’re always looking to turn challenges into opportunities so rather than close the museum for an extra week we opened with everything out on the floor giving visitors the opportunity to see the museum in a slightly different way and as a compromise for not being able to offer the full museum experience. (more…)

If you come down to the Museum today you’re sure of a big surprise.

1000 specimens on the floor

Ever since we moved into our new venue last March we’ve been waiting for the time that we could undertake a very exciting construction project. The room we now occupy was built as a library, and the 39 book cases that run along the bottom row of the Museum’s walls didn’t have any doors on them. We were unable to commission new glass doors in time for the opening so we went with the temporary measure of screwing sheets of perspex in to protect the specimens on display. (more…)

Number 2 in an occasional series highlighting objects from the stores. The first one is here. Hmmmm, I  may need to rethink the title for these posts as after IT STILL COMES FROM THE STORES and IT DIDN’T NOT COME FROM THE STORES it might be hard to come up with the next title.

Just a quick one today reflecting on the kinds of questions that objects provoke curators to ask of the collections they look after. I’ve been working with our documentation assistant on the spirit collection and  I found this curious unidentified object:

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Accuracy or Information?

Can we lie about what a specimen is or where it came from?

Would it make a difference to you if we deliberately mis-labelled a specimen? If we wrote interesting factual labels about common seals, but used a grey seal skull in the display, would you care if you found out? The facts would still be true. What if we said the specimen was from Britain when the specimen actually came from Denmark?

This is the newest QRator question we are asking through one of our ground-breaking iPad displays. It’s something we’re really interesting in hearing what you think, so please do get involved in the conversation. (more…)