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Relight my fire
Ancient vessels have usually gone through a lot before making their way into a comfortable museum store. First they have to survive the dangerous business of production and come out of the kiln intact...
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Do Dodo Bones Belong in a Museum?
This week the Daily Mail reported that two bones from a dodo were set to sell at auction for £30,000. This would be the first private sale of a dodo bone since 1934*. My first reaction was one of...
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Natural history under the hammer
Recently there have been a spate of high profile auctions of natural history specimens raising many issues about ownership, the value we should or shouldn’t put on natural history and the relationship...
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Is it ever acceptable for museums to lie?
I ask this question to our Museum Studies Masters students every year, and last month put it to our new Bachelor of Arts and Sciences students. Despite the difference in the age, background and...
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Putting human remains on display – people as animals
Last week we added a human specimen to our display of animal brains. Why wouldn’t we? The real question is why hadn’t we. And the answer is that we weren’t allowed to. The Human Tissues Act (2004)...
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Dead to me!
Human remains at the Petrie Museum. It’s time to come out of storage! Death is part of life, and for me, death is very much a part of work since I am currently rehousing the human remains at the...
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Specimen of the Week 285: The Pig Skull
Hello internet-folk. Will Richard here blogging a blog again. And for this blog I’ve chosen a specimen that nobody bothers with. We’ve got loads and they’re not exactly hard to find: flat-nosed,...
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Specimen of the Week 295: Do we fix the googly-eyed owl?
You do not have to be an expert zoologist to know that this is not what an owl looks like. Next week we launch a major conservation project called Fluff It Up: Make Taxidermy Great Again, to repair and...
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