Today’s blog is by UCL Education Studies student Wen (Wendy) Zhang who has been delving into the past of the Grant Museum

Secrets of the Grant Museum of Zoology: Unveiling the Untold Stories Behind the Exhibits

The story of how I found myself collaborating with the curators of the Grand Museum of Zoology is as poetic as it is serendipitous. During my first year in UCL’s BA Education Studies, Georgina Brewis’ module, “The Worlds of UCL”, opened the door to the university’s rich history. While many of my peers were drawn to the Petrie Museum’s cultural relics, I felt a unique connection to the hidden history of the Grant Museum. My curiosity led me to meet the museum’s curators, which turned out to confirm my instincts that there was indeed a rich history waiting to be discovered and celebrated.

Stepping into the Grant Museum, I was overwhelmed by a sense of history that transcended its modern façade. This inspired me to meet with Hannah, the current curator, and later with Mark, the 13th curator. Their untold stories about the museum were enchanting and unheard-of, leaving me eager to share them with you, as they are too captivating to keep to myself.

The Grant Museum of Zoology was accredited in 1998. Like many university museums, it has had to adapt to educational shifts, such as the emergence of student-centred pedagogy in the 20th century, to prove its value and ensure its survival. Fortunately, a science movement in the 1960s pioneered by Frank Oppenheimer at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, significantly revitalized these museums with its “hands-on” approach. Oppenheimer made obscure scientific research accessible and engaged the public through interactive learning, transforming the role and identity of science museums for generations.

A Special Function

Since 1827, Grant Museum’s teaching ethos has been anchored in the utilization of its collections – even earlier than the science movement. Robert E. Grant, its first curator, embodied this philosophy by facilitating hands-on learning. He ingeniously provided students with personal specimens for anatomy study and personally financed the acquisition of tools and specimens for dissections in the late 19^th century. Grant’s successor, E. Ray Lankester (3^rd curator), further promoted object-based learning by encouraging the use of specimens as teaching aids.

A fascinating record of object-based zoological teaching: matching up the specimen with its illustration.
Left: Teaching use of collection in Lankester’s Zoology Course (1887).
Right: Student’s notebook illustration (1906).

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Previously on the Grant Museum blog we introduced our biggest dinosaur, along with several mysteries. How did we get it? Who made it? Why does its head look so strange? Then in an exciting turn of events 4 years later we discovered a picture of our cast being made at the Natural History Museum. Now another 4 years on the story continues with Museum Studies students Imogen Geoghegan, Nadia Adal, Lauren Brown Phelan and Yanning Huang who have written this blog about their dinosaur research project.

**The Hypsilophodon foxii cast (Part 3)**

We took part in a research project with the Grant Museum of Zoology (GMZ) to uncover the truth behind this mystery object in the GMZ’s collection. It started with a few photographs and texts from the GMZ which led us to discover the cast’s background and even the species of the dinosaur (Hypsilophodon foxii), both of which were in doubt and unconfirmed before our project began.

LDUCZ-X185 a one armed cast of skeleton of Hypsilophodon foxii

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The Grant Museum is currently closed for refurbishment works until the new year, but we still have plenty of exciting stories to tell from the collection.

Today’s blog is by visiting researchers Dr Andrew McCarthy and Dr Jennie C. Litten-Brown from Canterbury College, UK, who have been looking into some of the parasites in our collection. This week we meet the Giant Thorny-Headed Worm of Swine, Macracanthorhynchus hirudinaceus (Acanthocephala: Oligacanthorhynchidae), a parasite that causes disease in both pigs and humans, that you will be able to see on display when we re-open.

The Giant Thorny-Headed Worm of Swine

Parasitism is probably the most common life strategy on Earth. Parasites are known to be important factors in maintaining ecosystem health, and the relatively new discipline of Parasite Conservation is devoted to preventing the extinction of endangered parasite species. However, several parasites cause serious disease in both humans and livestock. With increasing trends in more ethical farming methods such as Wild Farming, (often associated with rare breeds conservation), where livestock come into close contact with the natural environment, an awareness of potential pathogenic parasites is important. Specimens of one such parasite, an acanthocephalan, may be found in the Grant Museum of Zoology.

Acanthocephalans, commonly known as the “Thorny-Headed Worms” are a group of parasites typically under-represented in museum collections. Members of the group are known to cause a disease, acanthocephaliasis, in their vertebrate hosts, and some are of both veterinary and medical importance. The Grant Museum of Zoology has in its collection both fluid preserved adult worms (specimens LDUCZ-F21, F22 & F23), and Rudolf Weisker wax teaching model specimens c.1884 (LDCUZ-F26 & F84), of one of the largest acanthocephalans known to science. It goes by the rather dramatic common name of the “Giant Thorny-Headed Worm of Swine”, Macracanthorhynchus hirudinaceus. It may be described as a neglected parasite upon which relatively little research has been carried out. Its scientific name refers to the large, thorned proboscis (see Fig. 1), and the leech-like (“hirudo”) nature of its body (see Fig.2 ).

Fig. 1. The Parasite: Macracanthorhynchus hirudinaceus.
Scanning Electron Micrograph of the proboscis bearing thorns.
(© Migliore et al. (2021) )

Fig. 2. The Parasite: Macracanthorhynchus hirudinaceus. Entire worm from intestine of pig.
(CDC, Public Domain via Wiki Commons)

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The Grant Museum is currently closed this summer for some refurbishment works but we still have plenty of exciting stories to tell from the collection.

Today’s blog is by visiting researcher Dr Andrew McCarthy from Canterbury College, UK.

Initially this short piece was planned to be solely about the identification of specimens of an intestinal parasite of an endangered species of deep-water shark Echinorhinus brucus, the Bramble Shark, from the collections of the museum.

Echinorhinus brucus, the Bramble Shark.
(Goode & Bean (1896) Oceanic Ichthyology. Public Domain via Wiki Commons)

However, by strange coincidence as will be explained, it is being written on the day that the United Nations in New York announced in its new global marine biodiversity conservation initiative “The High Seas Treaty”. Embracing almost two thirds of the World’s oceans that lie outside national boundaries the treaty provides a legal framework for the establishment of vast Marine Protected Areas (MPA’s) to protect against loss of marine biodiversity. The coincidence is that the specimens under discussion here are thought, ultimately, to have their origin associated with the work of a British pioneer of marine conservation of well over one hundred years ago. He was namely Professor Sir Edwin Ray Lankester FRS, a past Director of the Grant Museum of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy (1874-1890), Jodrell Professor of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy at University College London, and Linacre Professor of Comparative Anatomy at the University of Oxford. A larger-than-life figure, some believe him to be one of the inspirations for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Professor Challenger of “The Lost World”.

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Even though the Grant Museum is closed this summer, we still have plenty of exciting stories to tell from the collection!

Today’s blog is by visiting researcher Dr Andrew McCarthy from Canterbury College, UK.

The Micrarium at the Grant Museum of Zoology is a beautiful and unique display of illuminated glass microscope slides of specimens from a bewildering range of groups within the Animal Kingdom. Each slide has its own story and potentially its own contribution to make to the study of zoology. The specimen on one such slide is probably at present better known than the rest due to its appearance in Jack Ashby’s excellent book “Animal Kingdom: A Natural History in 100 Objects” based on specimens from the Grant Museum. The specimen of a trematode parasite in the genus Isoparorchis appears in the book as a photogenic example of a parasitic flatworm in a concise overview of the group.

The Parasite: Isoparorchis specimen from the Micrarium
© UCL Grant Museum of Zoology & Oliver Siddons

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UCL Museums & Cultural Programmes are seeking proposals from artists, facilitators, and creative practitioners for fun and inspiring family activities. This is to be developed and delivered in response to our collections and displays in the Grant Museum of Zoology, Petrie Museum of Egyptian and Sudanese Archaeology and UCL Art Museum. Building on the success of past workshops, self-led activities, and other family-focused events, we are looking for proposals that fit with our themes and explore our collections in new and innovative ways.

UCL Museums & Cultural Programmes: Themes & Key Moments

For general information about UCL Museums please visit the homepage.

Our programmes and exhibitions explore themes relating to:

• Power & social justice
• Biodiversity, climate justice
• Research related to issues that reflect UCL’s impact locally, nationally and globally

We encourage you to make use of UCL Museums’ Collections Online.

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UCL Culture are seeking proposals from artists, facilitators, and creative practitioners for fun and inspiring family activities to be developed and delivered in our museums and cultural spaces. Building on the success of past workshops, self-led activities and other family focused-activities, we are looking for proposals that fit with our themes and explore our collections in new and innovative ways.

We are looking for proposals for activity that can be delivered in the Grant Museum of Zoology and the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology.

Workshop format

• Workshops must be family-friendly, supporting groups of mixed ages and abilities to work together to make, explore, create and move through our spaces
• Proposals can be for drop-in workshops, durational workshops or set timed events/performances
• Proposals should consider the museums as a space for mixed audiences, with families taking part in a space with other visitors
• Proposals must be suitable for delivery in the museum, but may also consider options for further reach through digital delivery
• Proposals can include a range of materials, but must be mainly ‘dry’ and suitable for a space that is use for collections display or handling (no pastels, paint or charcoal)
• For the Grant Museum workshops will need to be adapted to be deliverable for both an early opening for Family Members (10am-11am) and during public opening times (after 11am)

Dates

Workshops will be scheduled for Saturdays across 2022-23.

Confirmed dates for Grant Museum workshops are 30 April, 28 May, 25 June, 30 July, 27 Aug, 24 Sept, 30 Oct and 26 Nov. Dates for Petrie Museum workshops are tbc.

UCL Culture Themes

The Petrie Museum of Egyptian and Sudanese Archaeology houses just over 80,600 objects relating to life and death along the Nile Valley, making it one of the largest collections of Egyptian and Sudanese archaeology in the world. It includes many world ‘firsts’ such as the Tarkhan dress, the oldest known, most complete garment in the world.

The Grant Museum of Zoology has around 68,000 zoological specimens, including the world’s rarest skeleton, the quagga; thylacine specimens; dodo bones and a fine collection of models.

Our programmes and exhibitions explore themes relating to:

• Power & social justice
• Biodiversity, climate justice
• Research related to issues that reflect UCL’s impact locally, nationally and globally

There are also specific themes we are interested in exploring in connection to each museum.

• New entrance gallery in the Petrie (and accompanying family trail release date tbc) connected to hidden characters behind the collection
• Activities that make use of 3D printed replicas and digital images from the collection
• Activity that brings the Grant Museum’s micrarium to life
• Activity that explores the themes of Displays of Power (past exhibition in the Grant Museum)

Examples of recent activity

Family Yoga
An inclusive yoga session drawing inspiration from the incredible specimens on display in the Museum, inviting families to pause, move, breath, and look at the collections in new ways.
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/culture/whats-on/family-event-family-yoga-grant-museum

Puppet Making
This workshop invited families to explore extinction and survival, looking at why extinction has happened, and how we can prevent further extinction of species due to climate change.
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/culture/whats-on/design-and-make-your-own-puppet-animal

Hidden Histories
Map and gallery exploration activity tracing the journeys of some of our animal specimens to discover more about their origins and stories overseas.
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/culture/whats-on/hidden-histories-grant-museum

Fee

The base fee for workshop delivery is £200 to cover up to four hours of activity, with additional budget for materials. Additional preparation time can be agreed, depending on the nature of the proposal, its link to the museum displays and the required devising time. Please given an indication of this your proposal.

Next steps

Proposals of no more than one A4 page should be sent to museums@ucl.ac.uk by 18.00 on Friday 22 April.

UCL Culture is a multidisciplinary team committed to connecting the world with UCL. We use our collections, museums, theatre and most importantly our people and know-how to mobilise the UCL community, inspiring them to engage people with their research and their research with people.

We know that unless we are inclusive of everyone, including those in the LGBTQ+ community, then we are failing both the UCL community and the wider communities of which we are a part. We also know that “being inclusive” is an active not a passive state of being, and that we, as a department, need constantly to challenge our own thinking and actions, and those of others.

Fundamentally, we want to reaffirm UCL Culture’s commitment to challenging our own thinking and actions on inclusivity – and to ask others to challenge us. Below are some of the current projects we are involved with in support of our LGBTQ+ colleagues and communities. We are also launching an open call for future projects that continue and strengthen this support.

Current projects

• Supporting an informative exhibition on trans lives, led by UCL’s Trans Network, to be displayed in the Cloisters and other locations at UCL around Trans Day of Visibility (TDOV) 31 March 2022. The display will use lived experience from members of UCL past and present to explain what being transgender does and doesn’t mean.
• Writing Trans Lives, enabled by a UCL Culture Beacon Bursary, recently brought together aspiring and established trans and non-binary writers through workshops, a public reading and the published anthology ‘Transcribed’. The established writers provided practical advice and developed aspiring writers’ expertise and experience in writing their own narratives.
• LGBTQ+-led non-profit organisation QUEERCIRCLE are partnering with UCL Engagement on the evaluation of their new LGBTQ+ health and wellbeing programme. QUEERCIRCLE will host a diverse programme supporting LGBTQ+ artists and offering community participation opportunities, and UCL Culture will provide evaluation expertise, including a new trainee role specifically for a person from the LGBTQ+ and Black/Asian/Minority Ethnic community.
• Co-Production Collective recently published a response to UCL’s decision not to rejoin Stonewall’s diversity schemes, reaffirming their commitment to inclusivity at UCL and in their work with external co-production partners. This response also invited audiences to share thoughts on how Co-Production Collective can support the trans community and champion inclusion and challenge discrimination more widely.
• UCL Culture EDI Committee acts to advance and embed equity and inclusion in UCL Culture ways of working across all areas of our activity.

Future projects

• Do you have an idea for a UCL Culture exhibition, workshop, talk, live experience, or other public activity that supports, empowers or champions LGBTQ+ communities, at UCL and beyond?
• Has one of the projects above inspired to you respond, or take an idea further?

Whatever stage your plans are at, we invite you to book onto an online Programming and Exhibitions Drop-in session where you can discuss a proposal with a member of our team.

Please book into one of our regular sessions here: https://calendly.com/chrisjwebb/programmes-exhibitions-drop-in

We look forward to hearing from you!

During 2020 and 2021 while UCL was closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, UCL Culture’s curatorial team worked with students from the Institute of Archaeology’s MA Museum Studies on our first-ever virtual work placements. These projects, which included archive transcription, documentation and object label writing, provided opportunities for the students to gain practical curatorial skills to prepare them for their future careers while undertaking valuable work towards better understanding the collections.

This blog was written by Nicky Stitchman, UCL MA Museum Studies

As part of my MA in Museum Studies, I undertook a work placement with Hannah Cornish, Science Curator at UCL. My brief was to discover the different locations of UCL’s museums and teaching collections from the university’s origins in 1828. Ferreting out information from primary and secondary sources and finding maps that showed the movement of the various museums as the university expanded was fascinating, but I found myself drawn to people behind the museums. I am not talking here about the headliners – the Flinders Petries or Robert Grants of this world – but rather the curators, assistant curators and demonstrators who would have done most of the day-to-day tasks such as cataloguing, labelling, teaching, and physically moving the artefacts and objects within the collections. 

James Cossar Ewart at the Grant Museum 

J Cossar Ewart was the first professional, rather than professorial, curator of both the Anatomical Museum and Comparative Anatomy/Zoology Museum between 1875-1878. He was appointed after the retirement of William Sharpey (curator of the Anatomical Museum) and the death of Robert Grant (professor of comparative anatomy). In the official records, it was Professor Lankester, Grant’s successor, who refitted and rearranged the Museum of Zoology over this period but Ewart was instrumental in making the zoological preparations and was also known to have helped organise and take the subsequent practical classes that Lankester introduced to UCL. 

James Cossar Ewart worked at the Grant Museum 1875-1878. Image in public domain

After Ewart, there was a change in the running of the two largest museums at UCL at that time, with a separate curator appointed for the Museum of Anatomy, while the Zoological Museum (now the Grant Museum of Zoology) was titularly run by the Head of Department with a curatorial assistant.

Shattock and Stonham: Anatomy and Pathology

Mr Samuel Shattock succeeded Ewart as the Curator of the Anatomical and Pathological Museum. He had originally shown up in the records as a Mr Betty which caused me some confusion at the time, until I discovered that he had decided to change his name to prevent the extinction of the Shattock family name!  Shattock never qualified as a physician but dedicated his life to pathological medicine. He was responsible, alongside Dr Marcus Beck, for a descriptive catalogue of the surgical pathology preparations at UCL. His successor Charles Stonham also worked with Marcus Beck on Part II of this catalogue and then in 1890 produced another medical pathology catalogue, which can be found online at the Wellcome Collection. In the preface to this catalogue, Dr Barlow and Dr Money acknowledge the work of Charles Stonham, and state that it is ‘to him the preparation of this work is almost entirely due’.

Charles Stonham Curator of the UCL Anatomical and Pathological Museum (copyright UCL CC By 3.0)

Stonham was also responsible for the division of the pathology from the anatomy collection and its rehousing within the museum. He is also remembered on the UCL Roll of Honour as not only was he an instrumental figure in the London Mounted Brigade Field Ambulance, but he volunteered as a member of the Royal Army Medical Corps during WWI and died on service in January 1916 aged 58. 

Margaret Murray and the Petrie Museum

The dedication of many assistant curators at UCL is very clear. The redoubtable Margaret Murray (pictured here), who worked alongside Flinders Petrie for many years, was effectively in charge of the museum’s collections during Petrie’s many excavations in Egypt and the Levant. It should also be remembered that the Petrie Museum of Egyptology and the Department itself was founded on the collection and endowment of Mrs Amelia Edwards, who favoured UCL due to the early admission of women into the College.

Egyptologist Margaret Murray (Image in public domain)

Edith Goodyear and the Geology Museum

One of the first women to be involved in UCL’s museums was Edith Goodyear who was appointed as the Assistant in the Geology Museum in 1904 and subsequently remained in the department until the Second World War. Edith worked alongside Professor Edmund Garwood, reorganising the museum, teaching, and researching papers. A room in the Lewis Building was named for her, along with the First Year Student prize within Earth Sciences. It is also worth noting that in an age of inequality, the 1916/17 council minutes show Edith was paid £150, the same as her male colleague Dr J Elsden. 

Keeping it in the family: Mary and Geoffrey Hett

1917 also saw the appointment of Mary L Hett as Assistant in the Zoology Dept on the same salary of £150, where she remained until she took up the post as Professor of Biology at the Hardinge Medical College, Delhi.  She had followed her brother Geoffrey S Hett to UCL where he held the post of Curator of the Anatomical Museum from 1907-1910. Like his sister, he had a great interest in the natural world and was an authority on both British birds and on bats. Geoffrey became an ENT Specialist and during his time at UCL completed valuable research on the anatomy of the tonsils. Like his predecessor, Charles Stonham, he also served in World War I and used the skills learnt at UCL to treat head, and in particular, nasal injuries during this period. 

The stories of the men and women who studied and worked at UCL museums over the years are many and various, and these are just a sample of those whom I have met in my research for the Mapping UCL Museums Project. We may never be able to give the Curators and Assistant Curators the recognition that their work and dedication deserve but in introducing these few to you, I hope to have redressed the balance very slightly in their favour!  

Each year, UCL’s museums and collections are used in teaching practicals by university students on a wide range of courses including, but not limited to, archaeology, geography, history of art, political science and zoology. The use of collections have been at the heart of teaching at UCL since 1827 and Term 1 2020/2021 was no exception.

Grant Museum of Zoology ©David Bishop

In the months leading up to the beginning of term in September, museum staff worked with academic partners to develop digital teaching resources for online teaching (images of objects, pre-recorded lectures and virtual tours of the museums). Reoccupation and operations groups planned how to reopen the museums as covid-secure socially distanced teaching spaces. Curators developed face-to-face teaching options with module leaders and worked with departmental administrators to organise timetables for remote students as well as those planning to be on campus.

Overall, it has been a huge collaborative effort throughout the university to support students in this extraordinary year. UCL Culture museums and collections (Grant Museum of Zoology, Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, Art Museum, Pathology Museum and Science Collections) all contributed towards the UCL-wide effort to continue to provide a rewarding learning experience despite the exceptionally difficult circumstances. While there have been plenty of challenges, the response has been overwhelmingly positive and there is much to celebrate.

UCL Biosciences students in the Vertebrate Life and Evolution module during a practical in the Grant Museum. ©David Bishop

While most teaching moved online, many modules with practical learning objectives were delivered through blended teaching – a mix of online tutorials and face-to-face labs or object-based sessions. UCL Culture staff delivered 51 face-to-face teaching practicals in the museums and Object-Based Learning Lab and also developed digital content (live and pre-recorded lectures and digital images of objects) for 42 online tutorials. In total, there have been over 2700 student uses of the museum collections in Term 1 teaching modules.

UCL History of Art students in Object Based Learning Lab taught by a group of PGTAs to introduce Y1 BA students to a variety of theoretical positions to which they need to be aware of during the course of their degree. Every year they hold bespoke sessions using UCL Art Museum collections.

There are also several ongoing virtual student placements ‘based’ in the museums and a 10-month Institute of Archaeology conservation placement student working on site with UCL Culture conservators and the museum collections. Student research visits have also continued throughout the term with students accessing the collections both remotely and on campus.

UCL Institute of Archaeology conservation placement student Hadas Misgav in Petrie Museum undertaking a condition survey of metal objects in the collection.

There have been many lessons learned, adaptive responses and also innovations borne from the current situation. Smaller socially distanced group sizes in museum teaching spaces have allowed for more intimate, focussed experiences during face-to-face practicals. Likewise, smaller online group chats and tutorials have provided the opportunity for students to interact with their classmates and contribute to discussions whether they are on campus, self-isolating or in a different country. Remote students taking Biosciences Vertebrate Life and Evolution module were sent a 3D printed mystery vertebrate skull in the post so that they would have a similar specimen-based identification exercise as the London-based students.

3D printed mystery specimens

Remote Vertebrate Life and Evolution student Shin Kang with 3D printed mystery specimen

At the cusp of a new year, new term and new challenges, we look forward to developing further opportunities to enrich our students’ learning experience and academic studies. We have been tremendously fortunate to have had the phenomenal support of the wider UCL community which has provided a safe and supportive environment and trusted us to welcome students back into the museums. Thank you!

Tannis Davidson is the Curator of the Grant Museum of Zoology, UCL