tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/natural-history-museum-34717/articles
Natural History Museum – The Conversation
2020-11-18T13:15:06Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/142531
2020-11-18T13:15:06Z
2020-11-18T13:15:06Z
Climate crisis: how museums could inspire radical action
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368609/original/file-20201110-17-40eje1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=231%2C0%2C1314%2C876&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Gallery of Ecological Art (formerly China gallery) at the British Museum of Decolonised Nature.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Image courtesy John Zhang and Studio JZ</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When Victorian tea-merchant Frederick Horniman was looking to build a new home for his extensive collection of natural and cultural artefacts, his own back garden offered the perfect spot. Situated on one of the highest points in London, Surrey Mount – the Horniman family home – enjoyed commanding views across the city. The surrounding area of Forest Hill was a thriving suburb, and Horniman sought to “bring the world” to this growing community by making his collection accessible to everyone.</p>
<p>Architect Charles Harrison Townsend was commissioned to design the new museum, which opened in 1901. Soon afterwards, Horniman presented the museum and 15 acres of gardens to the London County Council as a gift in perpetuity for the “recreation, instruction and enjoyment” of the people of London.</p>
<p>Like many museums around the world, the Horniman was forced to close temporarily in March 2020 to help stop the spread of COVID-19. The gardens remained open throughout lockdown, taking on a vital role for the local community during this period of forced isolation. The sloping lawn where Surrey Mount once stood became an impromptu gathering place to watch the sun set across the city’s now empty skyscrapers.</p>
<p>It was around this time that the museum was added to a <a href="https://www.toppletheracists.org/">crowd-sourced map</a> of statues, monuments, named buildings and streets to “shine a light on the continued adoration of colonial icons and symbols”. Although known as a philanthropist and social reformer in Britain, Horniman’s wealth, like that of many of the founder’s of Britain’s museums, was acquired through colonial exploitation – in his case, the tea trade. </p>
<p>As the museum’s Chief Executive Nick Merriman <a href="https://www.horniman.ac.uk/story/frederick-hornimans-colonial-legacy/">noted</a> in an article written in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests, tea growing was “labour intensive, poorly compensated and, in many cases, used indentured or forced labour”. Similarly, its collections include objects such as a number of Benin Bronzes, which were obtained through <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/23/arts/design/benin-bronzes.html">colonial violence</a>. </p>
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<img alt="People wander through a grand museum exhibit." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366997/original/file-20201102-13-28jyuz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366997/original/file-20201102-13-28jyuz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366997/original/file-20201102-13-28jyuz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366997/original/file-20201102-13-28jyuz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366997/original/file-20201102-13-28jyuz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=559&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366997/original/file-20201102-13-28jyuz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=559&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366997/original/file-20201102-13-28jyuz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=559&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The Horniman Museum’s World Gallery.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Andrew Lee</span></span>
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<p>In many ways this is a familiar story. The emergence of the public museum in the 18th and 19th centuries cannot be disentangled from painful histories of colonial subjugation and exploitation. While Horniman’s desire to bring the world to south London may have been enacted in a spirit of education and social “improvement”, the very idea of building a museum to collect, order and display the world speaks to a broader mindset of western dominion over other cultures – and nature. </p>
<p>As many scholars have shown, <a href="https://natsca.org/article/2509">hierarchical notions of race</a> and <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/collecting-ordering-governing">culture</a> <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Pasts-Beyond-Memory-Evolution-Museums-Colonialism/Bennett/p/book/9780415247474">developed and perpetuated by museums</a> underpinned <a href="https://nmaahc.si.edu/learn/talking-about-race/topics/historical-foundations-race">violent practices around the globe</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/09/01/history-racist-colonial-violence-can-help-us-understand-police-violence/">continue to do so today</a>. They also supported a vision of European exceptionalism that helped to justify a harmful relationship with the natural world, encouraging <a href="http://banmarchive.org.uk/collections/newformations/04_73.pdf">ideals of progress</a> and exploitative <a href="http://www.marknesbitt.org.uk/uploads/1/7/7/1/17711127/nesbitt_cornish_jme29.pdf">understandings of nature as a resource</a>. </p>
<p>This attitude has been challenged repeatedly as part of <a href="https://www.museumdetox.org/">anti-racist</a>, anti-colonial and pro-environmental institutional reform. Now, in the shadow of a climate and ecological emergency that is impacting on all areas of social, political and economic life, the very purpose of museums is again being called into question.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><strong><em>This article is part of Conversation Insights</em></strong>
<br><em>The Insights team generates <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/insights-series-71218">long-form journalism</a> derived from interdisciplinary research. The team is working with academics from different backgrounds who have been engaged in projects aimed at tackling societal and scientific challenges.</em></p>
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<h2>Reimagining museums</h2>
<p>While the Horniman may be an archetypal museum in many respects, it also contains a few surprises. Alongside galleries dedicated to natural history, anthropology and musical instruments, visitors can explore a butterfly house, a small animal park, and an aquarium that is home to an innovative research project exploring <a href="https://www.horniman.ac.uk/project/project-coral/">coral reef reproduction</a>.</p>
<p>This unusual combination of natural and cultural collections, outdoor spaces and zoological research was highlighted in the museum’s <a href="https://www.horniman.ac.uk/story/the-horniman-announces-climate-and-ecology-manifesto/">climate and ecology manifesto</a>, published in January 2020. As well as plans to minimise waste, reduce pollution and invest in environmental research, the manifesto calls for a suite of changes related to the collections, the site and the organisation. It makes clear that while museums may be “institutions of the long term”, they have a “moral and ethical imperative to act now” in the fight against global warming.</p>
<p>From <a href="https://www.anchoragemuseum.org/media/press-releases/alaska-museum-responds-to-climate-change-through-major-projects-in-2020/#:%7E:text=Alaska%20Museum%20Responds%20to%20Climate%20Change%20Through%20Major%20Projects%20in%202020,-December%2026%2C%202019&text=The%20Anchorage%20Museum%20renovated%20an,and%20critically%20to%20climate%20change">Anchorage</a> to <a href="https://australian.museum/learn/climate-change/">Sydney</a>, this call to action has resonated across the sector in recent years. While the scale and urgency of climate change can often seem overwhelming, museums are beginning to recognise that they have a crucial role to play in shaping and supporting society’s response to this crisis. Just as the Horniman gardens became a restorative meeting space during lockdown, the purpose of museums more broadly is ripe for reimagining in the era of climate change.</p>
<p>But what might this look like? Earlier in 2020 we launched <a href="https://www.museumsforclimateaction.org/">an international design and ideas competition</a> to gather responses to this question. Over 250 submissions were received from 48 countries, with proposals from architects, designers, activists, artists, student groups, academics, indigenous communities and those already working in museums globally. </p>
<p>The brief was purposefully expansive: against the backdrop of a rapidly changing environment, what would it mean for museums to actively shape a more just and sustainable future for all? </p>
<p>Practical solutions and speculative concepts were equally welcome. While some responded with proposals to create more sustainable museum buildings, or develop new exhibitions on climate change, others sought to redefine the very foundations of museological thinking and practice. The <a href="https://www.museumsforclimateaction.org/#finalists">eight finalists</a> are currently developing their ideas for an exhibition at <a href="https://www.glasgowsciencecentre.org/">Glasgow Science Centre</a> ahead of the 26th UN Climate Change Conference <a href="https://www.ukcop26.org/">COP26</a>, which will take place in Glasgow in November 2021.</p>
<h2>A historical reckoning</h2>
<p>For some museums, looking to the future in this way will mean confronting their own complicity in many of the forces that have brought the planet to the brink of ecological collapse.</p>
<p>The term museum now embraces a dizzying variety of buildings, projects, ideas and experiences. But their roots can be traced to the princely palaces and cabinets of curiosity of the 17th century – spaces in which powerful individuals assembled and displayed their most notable possessions.</p>
<p>In Britain, Sir Hans Sloane’s collection – one of the largest in the country when he died in 1753 – included “curiosities” and natural specimens from North and South America, the East Indies and the West Indies. Sloane – who was born in Ireland in 1660 and found fame as a physician to the aristocracy – acquired the wealth to build his collection from enslaved labour on Jamaican sugar plantations. Sloane’s collection provided the foundation for the British Museum and the Natural History Museum, a legacy that <a href="https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2019/july/are-natural-history-museums-inherently-racist.html">both institutions</a> are now beginning to grapple with.</p>
<p>Most recently, in August 2020, the British Museum <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2020/aug/25/british-museum-removes-founder-hans-sloane-statue-over-slavery-links">announced</a> that it had moved a bust of Sloane to a new display case, where it could be reinterpreted alongside artefacts related to the British empire. While many museums are increasingly willing to acknowledge the many ways in which their own histories are bound up with ongoing debates around race and inequality, drawing threads between these injustices and the problem of climate change has yet to become common. Instead, it regularly falls to outside voices to make these connections clear.</p>
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<img alt="Observers behind a fence look at artwork of white faces and arms in foreground." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366711/original/file-20201030-20-18aeazm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366711/original/file-20201030-20-18aeazm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366711/original/file-20201030-20-18aeazm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366711/original/file-20201030-20-18aeazm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366711/original/file-20201030-20-18aeazm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366711/original/file-20201030-20-18aeazm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366711/original/file-20201030-20-18aeazm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">BP or not BP?’s ‘Monument’, installed at the British Museum overnight during their occupation of the museum on February 9 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Rodney Harrison</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<p>The work of activist group <a href="https://bp-or-not-bp.org/">BP or Not BP?</a> is a case in point here. Known for their highly theatrical protests, BP or Not BP? occupied the British Museum for three days in February, taking over galleries and creating a new <a href="https://bp-or-not-bp.org/2020/02/09/we-just-occupied-the-british-museum-for-51-hours-against-bp-sponsorship-and-colonialism/">sculptural artwork</a> in the museum’s Great Court, <a href="https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/british-museum-bp-or-not-bp-trojan-horse-1202677412/">partially supported</a> by staff and at least one member of the museum’s board. They sought to shine a spotlight on the impact of BP around the world, drawing attention to the different ways in which “the museum’s own history and that of its sponsor were born out of colonialism and empire”.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/news-room/press-releases/robert-milligan-statue-statement">Moving statues</a> and <a href="https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-confederate-monuments-american-museums-rethink-history">reinterpreting collections</a> can only go so far in this respect. As BP or Not BP? argue, reimagining what a “truly enlightened, responsible and engaged British Museum could look like” will require radical, systemic change.</p>
<p>Architect John Zhang’s proposal for our competition - titled The British Museum of Decolonized Nature - offers one vision of what such change might look like. With the museum emptied of its colonial artefacts, Zhang imagines nature taking over. This is not a dystopian wasteland, but a purposefully programmed set of experiences where “we may see our relationship with nature anew”. </p>
<p>Taking up the challenge of what it would mean to transform existing museums into spaces of social and climate justice, Zhang proposes turning the British Museum’s Great Court into an open forum for public debate on climate action. While such ideas may seem fantastical, BP or Not BP?’s intervention shows how this work is, in many senses, already underway.</p>
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<img alt="An overgrown building." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366713/original/file-20201030-15-1uswgb5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366713/original/file-20201030-15-1uswgb5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366713/original/file-20201030-15-1uswgb5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366713/original/file-20201030-15-1uswgb5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366713/original/file-20201030-15-1uswgb5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366713/original/file-20201030-15-1uswgb5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366713/original/file-20201030-15-1uswgb5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The British Museum of Decolonized Nature.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© John Zhang</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<h2>Collecting worlds, making futures</h2>
<p>While not all museums are burdened by the same colonial roots as the British Museum, the central premise of amassing natural and cultural objects to tell a particular story has shaped the way societies globally now understand their place in the world. In many instances, this has meant supporting, justifying and perpetuating certain ways of living that may have disastrous consequences for the environment.</p>
<p>In the early 20th century, the American Museum of Natural History sponsored a number of excursions to Africa to capture and kill animals for a series of <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/466593">new dioramas</a>. The creatures – including lions, giraffes, elephants and gorillas – were stuffed and mounted to encourage their preservation “in the wild”. This led to the establishment of one of the first protected areas in Africa, Albert National Park in the eastern Congo, named after the King of Belgium. The park, which is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, was renamed Virunga in 1969.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/2019/07/05/virunga-national-park-law-conservation-drc/">recent studies</a> have shown, such protected areas can create an unhelpful divide between local communities and the lands they inhabit. Indigenous voices and alternative systems of land management are <a href="https://www.corneredbypas.com/">often marginalised</a> in this approach, which extends the frozen world of the museum diorama to living ecosystems. Both are symptomatic of a modern attitude towards the environment that represents a significant obstacle to meaningful climate action.</p>
<p>In their response to the competition brief, experimental spatial practice <a href="https://design-earth.org/about/">Design Earth</a> concocted a playful yet provocative antidote to this situation – a magical realist story accompanied by speculative design drawings. </p>
<p>“Elephant in the Room” asks what would happen if one of the creatures shot by celebrated “conservationist” Teddy Roosevelt and subsequently mounted in the Hall of African Mammals at the American Museum of Natural History came to life and demanded justice. As the elephant rampages through the museum and out into the streets of New York, its belly “echoes with resonant demands to decolonise the museum” and “divest from carbon industries”. The museum itself becomes an architectural taxidermy, with only its facade remaining. </p>
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<img alt="A colourful drawing of a building with elephant in foreground." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366714/original/file-20201030-19-ajyjoh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366714/original/file-20201030-19-ajyjoh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366714/original/file-20201030-19-ajyjoh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366714/original/file-20201030-19-ajyjoh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366714/original/file-20201030-19-ajyjoh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366714/original/file-20201030-19-ajyjoh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366714/original/file-20201030-19-ajyjoh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Elephant in the Room.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Design Earth</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<p>This striking image upends the familiar hierarchies of the museum. Stasis and order give way to chaos – but of a regenerative kind – with the elephant standing in for the Earth itself. The idea that humans exercise any kind of “mastery” over nature was always an illusion. Museums – “those symbols of elitism and staid immobility” as anthropologist James Clifford once <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674779617">put it</a> – have helped to reinforce this view of the world for too long.</p>
<p>Reimagining museums as pillars in the fight against climate change means more than just paying lip service to issues of sustainability, recycling and carbon emissions (important as these are). It means a historical reckoning with the role museums have played in supporting the main drivers of climate breakdown – not least colonialism, capitalism (at least as we currently know it), and industrial modernity. </p>
<p>Climate action from this perspective is wrapped up with calls for <a href="https://e360.yale.edu/features/unequal-impact-the-deep-links-between-inequality-and-climate-change">social justice and racial equality</a>. Museums have emerged as a key battleground in these wider debates, and it is crucial that we begin to connect the dots between the intersecting legacies of <a href="https://climatemuseum.org/blog/2020/7/13/black-lives-and-the-climate-crisis-resources">colonialism and climate change</a>.</p>
<h2>Museums and climate action</h2>
<p><a href="https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-convention/what-is-the-united-nations-framework-convention-on-climate-change">Climate action</a> typically refers to a suite of activities that either look to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or enhance the way societies globally can adapt to the worst effects of climate change. </p>
<p>The 2015 <a href="https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement/the-paris-agreement">Paris Agreement</a> aims to ensure global average temperatures do not rise more than 2°C above pre-industrial levels. Current policies put the world on track for warming of around <a href="https://climateactiontracker.org/global/temperatures/">3°C</a>. As the journalist David Wallace-Wells writes in his searing book <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/feb/27/the-uninhabitable-earth-review-david-wallace-wells">The Uninhabitable Earth</a>, such a catastrophic rise would no doubt “shape everything we do on the planet, from agriculture to human migration to business and mental health”.</p>
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<img alt="Stuffed songbirds behind glass in a museum display." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/359346/original/file-20200922-24-18bsn17.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5760%2C3837&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/359346/original/file-20200922-24-18bsn17.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/359346/original/file-20200922-24-18bsn17.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/359346/original/file-20200922-24-18bsn17.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/359346/original/file-20200922-24-18bsn17.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/359346/original/file-20200922-24-18bsn17.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/359346/original/file-20200922-24-18bsn17.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Stuffed songbirds.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/z7QQyvnQDWc">Bruno Martins/Unsplash</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While museums around the world have implemented programmes of climate change education and pushed for more environmentally friendly practices, far less attention has been paid to building resilience or adapting to a rapidly changing climate. This echoes broader work across the heritage sector. As a <a href="https://www.icomos.org/en/77-articles-en-francais/59522-icomos-releases-future-of-our-pasts-report-to-increase-engagement-of-cultural-heritage-in-climate-action">recent report</a> on climate action from the International Council on Monuments and Sites highlights, questions of adaptation and resilience in heritage tend to focus on learning from the past to guide contemporary planning.</p>
<p>The profound challenge of the climate emergency forces us to think more radically about what museums could and should be. What would a museum dedicated to meaningful climate action look like? How would it operate? Who would it serve, and what stories would it tell? </p>
<p>Despite a general claim to be working in the interests of “future generations”, museums and the heritage sector more broadly rarely consider the future in specific terms. Instead, present conditions and attitudes are simply projected into the future, as if change is something to be fought against rather than embraced. As a recent <a href="https://www.uclpress.co.uk/products/125036">research project</a> led by one of us concluded, there is an urgent need for more speculative and creative thinking in the field to confront the inevitable social and environmental transformations climate change will bring.</p>
<p>This was very much in the back of our minds when we were developing the competition. Alongside new initiatives such as the New York City based <a href="https://climatemuseum.org/">Climate Museum</a> and <a href="https://climatemuseumuk.org/">Climate Museum UK</a>, which aim to address the climate crisis directly, we hoped the brief might encourage applicants to consider climate resilience and adaptation in broader terms, or ask how a changing climate might prompt new ways of living with the Earth. In short, we invited submissions that might consider not only how we survive, but how we might thrive in the climate change era.</p>
<h2>Living well in a warming world</h2>
<p>Several of the proposals did just that. Weathering With Us, submitted by Singapore-based architects Isabella Ong and Tan Wen Jun, imagines a new kind of contemplative museum space where climate action is materialised in the very structure and experience of the building. </p>
<p>Their dreamlike concept – a huge floating barge situated where the equator intersects with the prime meridian at 0’ latitude and 0’ longitude – takes the form of a <a href="https://hijk-lab.github.io/weatheringwithus/">mandala sand sculpture</a> made of <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/06/22/1004218/how-green-sand-could-capture-billions-of-tons-of-carbon-dioxide/">olivine</a>, a material which naturally pulls carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and redeposits it as carbon in the skeletons of marine creatures and shells in the ocean. </p>
<p>Our collective understanding of climate change is often represented by a <a href="https://thebulletin.org/climate-change/">doomsday clock</a>. The museum put forward by Weathering With Us asks what would happen if “we have a shared emblem that functions not as a harbinger of doom, but of healing?”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366715/original/file-20201030-21-1wgo7p9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Abstract grey circle with lines." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366715/original/file-20201030-21-1wgo7p9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366715/original/file-20201030-21-1wgo7p9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366715/original/file-20201030-21-1wgo7p9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366715/original/file-20201030-21-1wgo7p9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366715/original/file-20201030-21-1wgo7p9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366715/original/file-20201030-21-1wgo7p9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366715/original/file-20201030-21-1wgo7p9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Weathering With Us.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Isabella Ong and Tan Wen Jun</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If the monumental scale of Weathering With Us shows how the design of new museum buildings might rise to the challenge of climate action, other proposals gestured towards the practical work that museums perform in the world. In particular, a key theme running through many submissions was the possibility for museums to support new ways of living with and relating to the Earth.</p>
<p>Estimates on the number of museums in the world range from <a href="https://icom.museum/en/faq/how-many-museums-are-there-in-the-world/">55,000</a> to <a href="https://en.unesco.org/themes/museums">95,000</a>. The sheer diversity of the field is a reminder both of the malleability of the term “museum”, and of the globalised reach of an idea that has its roots in European colonialism and capitalist exploitation. </p>
<p>Existances - a project developed by a group of Brazilian academics and museum workers - simultaneously challenges these roots and asks “how we might live well” in the Anthropocene. Highlighting the power of collective knowledge in the fight against climate change, Existances (a neologism produced by bringing together the words “existence” and “resistance”) imagines a network of micro-museums embedded in and responding to the diverse cosmologies of Afro-Brasilian, Amerindian and rural communities. While acknowledging the severity of the climate emergency for such communities, this is a project of hope – one that challenges us to think and act together to imagine alternative ways of being in the world.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Drawing of mountain landscape with geodesic dome museum." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366716/original/file-20201030-23-1vit4wj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366716/original/file-20201030-23-1vit4wj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366716/original/file-20201030-23-1vit4wj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366716/original/file-20201030-23-1vit4wj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366716/original/file-20201030-23-1vit4wj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366716/original/file-20201030-23-1vit4wj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366716/original/file-20201030-23-1vit4wj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Existances.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Jairza Fernandes Rocha da Silva, Luciana Menezes de Carvalho, Nayhara J. A. Pereira Thiers Vieira, João Francisco Vitório Rodrigues, Natalino Neves da Silva & Walter Francisco Figueiredo Lowande</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Without denying the scale of this task, a few key themes emerged in response to the competition that suggest what shape this reorientation might take.</p>
<p>The first relates to breaking down boundaries and moving away from authoritarian values of order and control. In an inevitably transforming future world, museums must accept and embrace the creative possibilities of uncertainty and change rather than work against these forces. </p>
<p>This will also mean reimagining the familiar structure of museums. Instead of centralised spaces and buildings, many of the proposals submitted to the competition called for non-hierarchical “networks” enabling a decentralised approach to collecting, education and research. </p>
<p>This would require a fundamental rethink of the way museums are typically governed - the third and perhaps most important theme to emerge across the competition entries. Certain crises demand <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/acting-uncertain-world">new forms</a> of decision making where experts and lay people can come together to imagine new futures. </p>
<p>It’s clear that 2020 has been a tumultuous year for museums. The pandemic has forced <a href="https://hyperallergic.com/578563/aam-survey-one-third-museums-reopen/">many</a> around the world to close, and each week brings news of further <a href="https://www.apollo-magazine.com/museums-employees-redundancies-pandemic/">staff redundancies</a>. In the UK, museums have been drawn into a manufactured <a href="https://elephant.art/why-the-crisis-tearing-through-museums-affects-everyone-21092020/">culture war</a> with threats from the government that those institutions which remove statues or other contested objects from display<a href="https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-global-race-britain-statues/uk-government-warns-museums-not-to-remove-statues-over-protests-idUKKBN26J2Z3"> risk losing their public funding</a>. On top of all this, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/06/arts/what-is-a-museum.html">a battle has raged</a> within the international museums sector over what the term “museum” even means. To say this is a sector in flux would be an understatement.</p>
<p>Museums will not solve the complex problem of climate change, but they might set a powerful example for how this work can unfold across society over the coming years. The ideas generated in response to our competition show how vibrant, collective and transformative museums could be. The climate crisis brings with it a sense of inevitable change, of things unravelling, but how society responds to this change is far from certain. An expanded notion of climate action is required, one that focuses on environmental justice, racial, social and economic inequalities and - perhaps most radically - new forms of living with the Earth. </p>
<p>As the Horniman proves, in dealing with <a href="https://www.anthropology-news.org/index.php/2019/03/20/museums-matter-in-the-current-climate-of-anti-black-racism/">complex legacies</a> and ongoing injustices, museums have already become testing grounds for localised action on a broad range of social, political and economic issues. The position they take with regards to climate action could resonate far beyond the field.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption"></span>
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<p><em>For you: more from our <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/insights-series-71218?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">Insights series</a>:</em> </p>
<ul>
<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/prehistoric-communities-off-the-coast-of-britain-embraced-rising-seas-what-this-means-for-todays-island-nations-147879?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">Prehistoric communities off the coast of Britain embraced rising seas – what this means for today’s island nations</a></em> </p></li>
<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/mammoth-task-the-russian-family-on-a-resurrection-quest-to-tackle-the-climate-crisis-138142?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">Mammoth task: the Russian family on a resurrection quest to tackle the climate crisis</a></em> </p></li>
<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/searching-for-misha-the-life-and-tragedies-of-the-worlds-most-famous-polar-bear-137344?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">Searching for Misha: the life and tragedies of the world’s most famous polar bear</a></em> </p></li>
</ul>
<p><em>To hear about new Insights articles, join the hundreds of thousands of people who value The Conversation’s evidence-based news. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/the-daily-newsletter-2?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK"><strong>Subscribe to our newsletter</strong></a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/142531/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Colin Sterling currently receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rodney Harrison currently receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the European Commission. He has previously received funding from the UKRI/Global Challenges Research Fund, British Academy, Wenner-Gren Foundation, Australian Research Council, and Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies.</span></em></p>
How museums can reimagine themselves in the context of the climate crisis.
Colin Sterling, AHRC Research Fellow, Institute of Archaeology, UCL
Rodney Harrison, Professor of Heritage Studies, UCL
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/141401
2020-06-24T15:30:22Z
2020-06-24T15:30:22Z
Coronavirus: how museums and galleries are preparing for the ‘new normal’
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/343770/original/file-20200624-132972-1x5xc8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5917%2C3938&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Institutions such as the Natural History Museum in London are preparing to open their doors to the public once again. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">elRoce via Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The announcement by UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, that a range of public spaces in England, including museums and art galleries, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2020/jun/22/museums-galleries-and-cinemas-to-reopen-in-england-from-4-july">will be allowed to open on July 4</a> has everyone in the cultural sector working furiously to create a safe, inclusive and welcoming environment to entice people back in. </p>
<p>But they face many challenges. On top of the swingeing <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/libraries-museums-arts-galleries-funding-recourses-county-council-network-cnn-social-care-a8741271.html">cuts to arts funding across the nations</a> against which cultural providers have battled for decades, there is now the imperative to provide more inclusive and stimulating content to persuade audiences to return. </p>
<p>We’re lucky in Scotland in that we have a <a href="https://www.gov.scot/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-framework-decision-making-scotlands-route-map-through-out-crisis-phase-2-update">bit longer to work on this</a> than our counterparts in England, but the issues remain the same. How can we make spaces as safe as possible while maintaining a welcoming atmosphere? And who is going to pay for these adjustments? How can we maintain the quality of our offerings and create content that is so compelling and engaging and inclusive that people will flock to see it despite the inconvenience of safety restrictions?</p>
<p>Social media has been vital to the way many people are navigating their way through lockdown, and the cultural sector – populated as it is with innovative and creative people – has risen to the occasion. One of the most successful and widely emulated initiatives was the <a href="https://mymodernmet.com/recreate-art-history-challenge/">Getty Museum’s online challenge</a> to people to create their own copy of an artwork using easily reached objects and members of their household. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1242845952974544896"}"></div></p>
<p>When the lockdown started, many museums, galleries and theatres moved quickly to get huge swaths of activity online. The <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org">Metropolitan Museum of Art</a> in New York, for example, has really <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/blogs/now-at-the-met/2020/coronavirus-response-president-director">finessed its online offering</a>. At my university in Dundee, the world-renowned <a href="https://www.dundee.ac.uk/cooper-gallery/aboutus/cooper-gallery/">Cooper Gallery</a> at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design had programmed a cutting-edge exhibition project with <a href="https://www.anothergaze.com/suddenly-woman-spectator-conversation-interview-feminism-laura-mulvey/">Laura Mulvey</a>. The plan was to examine
her work with her collaborator, the <a href="https://www.dundee.ac.uk/cooper-gallery/exhibitions/aisforavant-gardezisforzerolauramulveypeterwollen/?utm_content=buffer4ed5d&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer">avant-garde filmmaker Peter Wollen</a>, who passed away in December 2019 at the age of 81. We were unable to open the exhibition because of lockdown. Principal curator <a href="https://www.dundee.ac.uk/people/sophia-hao">Sophia Hao</a> developed an <a href="https://sites.dundee.ac.uk/cooper-gallery-inbetween/">online programme of events</a> that has explored the work in an immersive and participatory way including live-streamed talks and writing projects.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WwEbaQ3GEZ8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>Engaging in the virtual space</h2>
<p>Online access to vast collections of artworks and magnificent performances has been a genuine joy to many people for whom the loss of access to culture would otherwise have been depressing. The fact that this work is now available to a much wider audience than can actually physically go to the galleries has meant that many non-traditional audiences are now able to engage with work that they would otherwise never have come across. I hope that this taster has encouraged many more people to really explore a new range of artistic and cultural offerings that they previously considered not to be for them.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/343801/original/file-20200624-132982-td0o42.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/343801/original/file-20200624-132982-td0o42.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343801/original/file-20200624-132982-td0o42.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343801/original/file-20200624-132982-td0o42.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343801/original/file-20200624-132982-td0o42.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=616&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343801/original/file-20200624-132982-td0o42.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=616&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343801/original/file-20200624-132982-td0o42.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=616&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Whistler’s Aubergine’ : a new take on the classic painting Whistler’s Mother.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Cate Newton</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Of course, those without access to fast broadband and up-to-date technology are still out in the cold. Access to free, inclusive, location-based engagement projects that are such an important part of the work of all museums and galleries has been cut off.</p>
<h2>Safe – and sound</h2>
<p>At the top of everyone’s agenda is of course safety. Maintaining physical restrictions with clear, accessible signage outlining lanes and one-way systems should be simple enough for creative exhibition designers. But it’s going to take a lot more to earn audience confidence. </p>
<p>In Dundee, the main players in the cultural sector including V&A Dundee, Dundee Contemporary Arts, both universities and the city council are working collaboratively to create strategic plans for the reopening of venues.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/343748/original/file-20200624-132982-288z9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/343748/original/file-20200624-132982-288z9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=280&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343748/original/file-20200624-132982-288z9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=280&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343748/original/file-20200624-132982-288z9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=280&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343748/original/file-20200624-132982-288z9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=351&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343748/original/file-20200624-132982-288z9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=351&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343748/original/file-20200624-132982-288z9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=351&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The V&A in Dundee is working with other institutions in the city on a post-lockdown strategy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">DigitalNatureScotland via Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As well as developing clear messages about the value of culture to society and the economy as well as public health and communities, we are working on practical solutions to some of the issues. For example, building on a University of Dundee initiative to engage the local crafting community to create <a href="https://www.dundee.ac.uk/stories/stitch-time-saves-ninewells">scrubs and masks for NHS workers</a> a project is in development to commission local craft makers and small businesses to make masks for the cultural and tourist venues in the city. This will not only support self-employed practitioners to earn, but it will hopefully normalise the wearing of masks and facilitate a caring and community focused atmosphere in arts spaces.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/343756/original/file-20200624-133002-1o6dhe7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/343756/original/file-20200624-133002-1o6dhe7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=364&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343756/original/file-20200624-133002-1o6dhe7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=364&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343756/original/file-20200624-133002-1o6dhe7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=364&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343756/original/file-20200624-133002-1o6dhe7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343756/original/file-20200624-133002-1o6dhe7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/343756/original/file-20200624-133002-1o6dhe7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The ‘Scrubs Project’ has engaged local crafters to create masks and safety equipment for NHS workers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Helen Healy</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Building audience confidence is a huge part of the equation, but it must be complemented by a renewed and innovative sense of purpose among curators and producers. There is an imperative to <a href="https://theconversation.com/director-of-science-at-kew-its-time-to-decolonise-botanical-collections-141070">decolonise</a> the way we display museum collections and programme exhibitions and theatrical productions and we must focus far more on accessibility, inclusion, equality and diversity. Alongside this, there is a need to create genuinely engaging content that will be strong, exciting and relevant enough to make it worthwhile coming out of lockdown bubbles.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/director-of-science-at-kew-its-time-to-decolonise-botanical-collections-141070">Director of science at Kew: it's time to decolonise botanical collections</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Let’s just hope that funding is allocated to make this transition possible and that the multifaceted benefits of engagement with the arts are recognised as the essential element of the human experience that we know it to be. If anyone can come up with innovative designs to deal with these issues, it’s a sector that is populated by some of the most creative people in the country.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/141401/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Janice Aitken is a trustee of Dundee Women's Aid, Tin Roof Artists collective, the Duncan of Jordanstone Centenary Trust.</span></em></p>
Cultural institutions are puzzling out to to make their buildings exciting and safe at the same time.
Janice Aitken, Reader in Art and Design, University of Dundee
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/107878
2019-01-07T11:41:07Z
2019-01-07T11:41:07Z
3D scans of bat skulls help natural history museums open up dark corners of their collections
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/252530/original/file-20190104-32139-145yycy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3310%2C1996&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ready to spatially manipulate 3D bat skulls from the comfort of your own computer?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0203022">Shi et al, PLoS ONE 13(9): e0203022 </a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Picture a natural history museum. What comes to mind? Childhood memories of dinosaur skeletons and dioramas? Or maybe you still visit to see planetarium shows or an IMAX feature? You may be surprised to hear that behind these public-facing exhibits lies a priceless treasure trove that most visitors will never see: a museum’s collections.</p>
<p>Far from being forgotten, dusty tombs, <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/natural-history-museums-closing-survival-modernizing">as is sometimes the perception</a>, these collections host the very cutting edge of research on life on this planet. The sheer scale of some of the largest collections can be staggering. The <a href="https://naturalhistory.si.edu">Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History</a>, for instance, houses over <a href="https://naturalhistory.si.edu/research">150 million specimens</a>. Even a smaller academic institution, like the <a href="https://lsa.umich.edu/rmc">Research Museums Center of the University of Michigan</a>, houses a labyrinth of specimen vaults, preserving millions of skeletons, fossils, dried plant material and jarred organisms.</p>
<p>Most importantly, poring over this wealth of knowledge at any given time are active researchers, working to unravel the intricacies of Earth’s biodiversity. At the University of Michigan, where <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=4PC6zUgAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=sra">I received my Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology</a>, I worked nestled among these skeletons, fossils and other natural treasures. These specimens were critical to my research, as primary records for the natural history of the world. </p>
<p>Yet despite the incalculable value of these collections, I often wondered about how to make them more accessible. A project to digitally scan hundreds of bat skulls was one way to bring specimens that would look at home in an antique Victorian collection straight to the forefront of 21st-century museum practices.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/252451/original/file-20190103-32133-1tgxj6a.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/252451/original/file-20190103-32133-1tgxj6a.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/252451/original/file-20190103-32133-1tgxj6a.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/252451/original/file-20190103-32133-1tgxj6a.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/252451/original/file-20190103-32133-1tgxj6a.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/252451/original/file-20190103-32133-1tgxj6a.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/252451/original/file-20190103-32133-1tgxj6a.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/252451/original/file-20190103-32133-1tgxj6a.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In most museums, specimens – like these bats in the Research Museums Complex at the University of Michigan’s Museum of Zoology – are carefully protected in drawers and cabinets, with meticulous metadata that record where and when they were collected.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dale Austin, Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Michigan</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A valuable resource, largely hidden from view</h2>
<p>By researching variation among and within collection specimens, biologists have uncovered many ecological and evolutionary mysteries of the natural world. For instance, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1710239114">a recent study</a> <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/10/what-dead-birds-know-about-the-respiratory-rasp-of-the-palisades/542685/">on bird specimens</a> traced the increasing concentration of atmospheric black carbon and its role in climate change over more than a century. Scientists can <a href="https://www.aaas.org/news/spotlight-science-writers-beth-shapiro">collect ancient DNA from specimens</a> and gather information about historical population levels and healthy genetic diversity for organisms that are now threatened and endangered.</p>
<p>My own research on <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/jbi.13353">global bat diversity</a> used hundreds of museum specimens to conclude that tropical bats coexist more readily than many biologists expect. This finding fits with an overall pattern across much of the tree of life where tropical species outnumber their temperate cousins. It may also help explain why in many parts of Central and South America, bats are among the most abundant and diverse mammals, period.</p>
<p>However, research on these specimens often requires direct access, which can come at a steep price. Researchers must either travel to museums, or museums must ship their specimens en masse to researchers - both logistical and financial challenges. Museums are understandably wary of shipping many specimens that are truly irreplaceable - the last evidence that some organisms ever existed in our world. A museum’s budget and carbon footprint can quickly balloon with loans. And as physical specimens cannot be in more than one location at once, researchers may have to wait an indefinite amount of time while their materials are loaned to someone else.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/252458/original/file-20190104-32139-6lv9qm.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1%2C1%2C237%2C237&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/252458/original/file-20190104-32139-6lv9qm.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1%2C1%2C237%2C237&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/252458/original/file-20190104-32139-6lv9qm.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/252458/original/file-20190104-32139-6lv9qm.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/252458/original/file-20190104-32139-6lv9qm.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/252458/original/file-20190104-32139-6lv9qm.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/252458/original/file-20190104-32139-6lv9qm.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/252458/original/file-20190104-32139-6lv9qm.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A different way to access biological specimens, using micro-CT scans.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0203022">Shi et al, PLoS ONE 13(9): e0203022,</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>CT scanning bat skulls</h2>
<p>I have tried to tackle these issues of access with my collaborators <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=0NdRYeoAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">Daniel Rabosky</a> and <a href="https://nature.berkeley.edu/wanglab/erinwesteen/">Erin Westeen</a> using micro-CT technology. Just like with medical CT scanning, micro-CT uses X-rays to digitize objects without damaging them – in our case, these scans occur at the fine scale of millionths of meters (micrometers). This means micro-CT scans are incredibly accurate at high resolutions. Even very tiny specimens and parts are preserved in vivid detail.</p>
<p>For my Ph.D. research, we used micro-CT scanning to digitize nearly 700 individual bat skulls from our museum’s collection. With estimates of about 1,300 described species, bats represent about 25 to 30 percent of modern mammal species, second only to rodents. However, one of the reasons researchers have long been fascinated by bats is their immense diversity of behavior and function in nature. Much of this ecological diversity is encoded in their skulls, which vary broadly in shape and size.</p>
<p>At the <a href="https://dent.umich.edu/research/microct-core">Michigan School of Dentistry’s</a> micro-CT facility, we scanned every bat skull at high resolutions. Each scan produced hundreds of thousands of images per specimen - each image a tiny cross-section of an original skull. With these “stacks” of cross-sections, we then reconstructed 3D surfaces and volumes. In essence, we recreated a 3D “digital specimen” from each of the roughly 700 originals.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/lDsVxOf_2T0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Users can manipulate the 3D cranial model created from micro-CT scans of a female <em>Desmodus rotundus</em>, the common vampire bat.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Digital specimens open doors</h2>
<p>In partnership with MorphoSource at Duke University, we’ve since <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0203022">published our digital specimens</a> within an <a href="https://www.morphosource.org/Detail/ProjectDetail/Show/project_id/386">open-access repository</a> for researchers, educators and students. Each digital specimen is associated with the same identifying data as its original, enabling research without travel or shipment. Even better, many delicate parts can be digitally dissected without fear of irreparable damage. Digital specimens can even be 3D-printed at varying scales for use in educational settings and museum exhibits.</p>
<p>My colleagues Dan and Erin have continued to expand these efforts to other vertebrates at our museum. Our hope is that the broader scientific community will embrace open-access digital specimen data in much the same way that digital, publicly available <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genbank/">genetic data</a> has been adopted across biology. Digitization can expand the reach of each museum, especially as scanning prices drop and open-access micro-CT software becomes more practical.</p>
<p>This digital revolution comes at time when many <a href="https://theconversation.com/lesson-from-brazil-museums-are-not-forever-102692">natural history museums are endangered</a>. Around the globe, museums are hamstrung by <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-met-field-museum-scientists-20130731-story.html">budget cuts</a> and decades of neglect, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/04/science/brazil-museum-fire.html">with devastating consequences</a>.</p>
<p><iframe id="tc-infographic-365" class="tc-infographic" height="400px" src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/infographics/365/cb870c7490a046c695b7dbc8e8ff4d67ce6a73fb/site/index.html" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>One way to revitalize museums is to <a href="https://theconversation.com/digitizing-the-vast-dark-data-in-museum-fossil-collections-102833">embrace digital missions</a> that preserve priceless data and promote global collaboration. Far from making physical collections obsolete, digitization can modernize natural history museums, as it has with <a href="https://tisch.nyu.edu/cinema-studies/miap/research-outreach/research/dpoe-n">libraries</a> and <a href="https://www.francetoday.com/culture/museums-galleries/the_louvre_goes_digital/">other</a> <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/blogs/now-at-the-met/2017/digital-future-at-the-met">museums</a> of art, history and culture. The originals will always be there for those looking to dive deep into natural history. The digital wing can instead invite curiosity and questions from sources most museums could never dream of otherwise reaching.</p>
<p>In my earliest days as a biologist, I was plagued by common researcher worries. What was going to happen to all of my data? Who else would ever see it? Scientists never know what new life may be breathed into our basic research after years, decades, centuries. I think about the hundreds of past scientists who unknowingly contributed data to my own research, spanning nearly 130 years and six continents of expeditions.</p>
<p>By digitizing their earlier efforts, my colleagues and I ensured that they can reach broad audiences, far beyond what they likely imagined. No longer should the potential impact of any specimen be restricted by the walls and constraints of any one museum. Instead, museums can throw their doors open to a digital future, inviting anyone into the endless wonders of the natural world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/107878/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jeff J. Shi received funding for this research from the National Science Foundation's Division of Environmental Biology, in the form of a Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant co-awarded to Dr. Daniel L. Rabosky. </span></em></p>
Museums’ collections are a priceless resource for scientists, but they’re not easy to access. Digitizing specimens – like the 700 bat skulls the author studied – is a way to let everyone in.
Jeff J. Shi, Education Program Specialist, University of Minnesota
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/102833
2018-09-17T10:50:47Z
2018-09-17T10:50:47Z
Digitizing the vast ‘dark data’ in museum fossil collections
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236483/original/file-20180914-177965-18rfcei.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=296%2C7%2C4290%2C3140&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">With a lot not on display, museums may not even know all that's in their vast holdings.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/LA-Tar-Pits/b4ca06d8d3894287bb812f0d5c92024a/1/0">AP Photo/Jae C. Hong</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The great museums of the world harbor a secret: They’re home to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.352.6287.762">millions upon millions of natural history specimens</a> that almost never see the light of day. They lie hidden from public view, typically housed behind or above the public exhibit halls, or in off-site buildings.</p>
<p>What’s on public display represents only the tiniest fraction of the wealth of knowledge under the stewardship of each museum. Beyond fossils, museums are the repositories for what we know of the world’s living species, as well as much of our own cultural history. </p>
<p>For paleontologists, biologists and anthropologists, museums are like the historians’ archives. And like most archives – think of those housed in the Vatican or in the Library of Congress – each museum typically holds many unique specimens, the only data we have on the species they represent. </p>
<p>The uniqueness of each museum collection means that scientists routinely make pilgrimages worldwide to visit them. It also means that the loss of a collection, as in the recent heart-wrenching fire in Rio de Janeiro, represents an irreplaceable loss of knowledge. It’s akin to the loss of family history when a family elder passes away. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-06192-9">In Rio, these losses included</a> one-of-a-kind dinosaurs, perhaps the oldest human remains ever found in South America, and the only audio recordings and documents of indigenous languages, including many that no longer have native speakers. Things we once knew, we know no longer; things we might have known can no longer be known.</p>
<p>But now digital technologies – including the internet, interoperable databases and rapid imaging techniques – make it possible to electronically aggregate museum data. Researchers, including a multi-institutional team <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=UQhjq5QAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">I</a> am leading, are laying the foundation for the coherent use of these millions of specimens. Across the globe, teams are working to bring these “dark data” – currently inaccessible via the web – into the digital light.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236480/original/file-20180914-177941-jqvlcf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236480/original/file-20180914-177941-jqvlcf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236480/original/file-20180914-177941-jqvlcf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236480/original/file-20180914-177941-jqvlcf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236480/original/file-20180914-177941-jqvlcf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236480/original/file-20180914-177941-jqvlcf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236480/original/file-20180914-177941-jqvlcf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236480/original/file-20180914-177941-jqvlcf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Researchers must travel to visit non-digitized specimens in person, not knowing what they will find – if they’re even aware of their existence.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Smithsonian Institution</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What’s hidden away in drawers and boxes</h2>
<p>Paleontologists often describe the fossil record as incomplete. But for some groups the fossil record can be remarkably good. In many cases, there are plenty of previously collected specimens in museums to help scientists answer their research questions. The issue is how accessible – or not – they are.</p>
<p>The sheer size of fossil collections, and the fact that most of their contents were collected before the invention of computers and the internet, make it very difficult to aggregate the data associated with museum specimens. From a digital point of view, most of the world’s fossil collections represent “dark data.” The fact that large portions of existing museum collections are not computerized also means that <a href="http://mentalfloss.com/article/60536/11-things-lost-then-rediscovered-museums">lost treasures are waiting to be rediscovered</a> within museums themselves. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236479/original/file-20180914-96155-d0n2wi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236479/original/file-20180914-96155-d0n2wi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236479/original/file-20180914-96155-d0n2wi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236479/original/file-20180914-96155-d0n2wi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236479/original/file-20180914-96155-d0n2wi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236479/original/file-20180914-96155-d0n2wi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236479/original/file-20180914-96155-d0n2wi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236479/original/file-20180914-96155-d0n2wi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">High-resolution photos are an important part of the digitization process.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Smithsonian Institution</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>With the vision and investment of funding agencies such as the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the United States, numerous museums are collaborating to digitally bring together their data from key parts of the fossil record. The <a href="http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/">University of California Museum of Paleontology</a> at Berkeley, where I work, is <a href="https://epicc.berkeley.edu/people-participants/">one of 10 museums</a> now aggregating some of their fossil data. Together through our digitized collections, we are working to understand how major environmental changes have affected marine ecosystems on the eastern coast of the Pacific Ocean, from Chile to Alaska, over the last 66 million years.</p>
<p>The digitization process itself includes adding the specimen’s collection data into the museum computer system if it hasn’t already been entered: its species identification, where it was found, and the age of the rocks it was found in. Then, we digitize the geographic location of where the specimen was collected, and take digital images that can be accessed via the web.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.idigbio.org/content/thematic-collections-networks">Integrated Digitized Biocollections</a> (iDigBio) site hosts all the major museum digitization efforts in the United States funded by the current NSF initiative that began in 2011.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236481/original/file-20180914-177962-15set64.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236481/original/file-20180914-177962-15set64.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236481/original/file-20180914-177962-15set64.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=155&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236481/original/file-20180914-177962-15set64.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=155&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236481/original/file-20180914-177962-15set64.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=155&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236481/original/file-20180914-177962-15set64.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=195&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236481/original/file-20180914-177962-15set64.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=195&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236481/original/file-20180914-177962-15set64.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=195&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Team members entering information about each fossil into a centralized database.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Smithsonian Institution</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Significantly, the cost of digitally aggregating the fossil data online, including the tens of thousands of images, is remarkably small compared with the cost it took to collect the fossils in the first place. It’s also less than the expense of maintaining the physical security and accessibility of these priceless resources – a cost that those supposed to be <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/04/world/americas/brazil-museum-fire.html">responsible for the museum in Rio apparently were not</a> willing to cover, with disastrous consequences.</p>
<h2>Digitized data can help answer research questions</h2>
<p>Our group, called EPICC for <a href="https://epicc.berkeley.edu/">Eastern Pacific Invertebrate Communities of the Cenozoic</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2018.0431">quantified just how much “dark data”</a> are present in our joint collections. We found that our 10 museums contain fossils from 23 times the number of collection sites in California, Oregon and Washington than are currently documented in a leading online electronic database of the paleontological scientific literature, <a href="https://paleobiodb.org/">the Paleobiology Database</a>. </p>
<p>EPICC is using our newly digitized data to piece together a richer understanding of past ecological response to environmental change. We want to test ideas relevant to long- and short-term climate change. How did life recover from the mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs? How did changes in ocean temperature drive marine ecosystem change, including those associated with the isolation of the cooler Pacific Ocean from the warmer Caribbean Sea when the land bridge at Panama first formed?</p>
<p>To answer these questions, all the relevant fossil data, drawn from many museums, needs to be easily accessible online to enable large-scale synthesis of those data. Digitization enables paleontologists to see the forest as a whole, rather than just as a myriad number of individual trees.</p>
<p>In some cases – such as records of past languages or the collection data associated with individual specimens – digital records help protect these invaluable resources. But, typically, the actual specimens remain crucial to understanding past change. Researchers often still need to make key measurements directly on the specimens themselves. </p>
<p>For example, Berkeley Ph.D. student Emily Orzechowski is using specimens being aggregated by the EPICC project to test the idea that the ocean off the Californian coast will become cooler with global climate change. Climate models predict increased global warming will lead to stronger winds down the coast, which will increase the coastal upwelling that brings frigid waters from the deep ocean to the surface – the cause of San Francisco’s famous summer fogs.</p>
<p>The test she’s using relies on mapping the distributions of huge numbers of fossils. She’s measuring subtle differences in the oxygen and carbon isotopes found in fossil clam and snail shells that date to the last interglacial period of Earth’s history about 120,000 years ago, when the west coast was warmer than it is today. Access to the real-life fossils is crucial in this kind of research.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236495/original/file-20180915-177953-1qv2pkq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236495/original/file-20180915-177953-1qv2pkq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236495/original/file-20180915-177953-1qv2pkq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236495/original/file-20180915-177953-1qv2pkq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236495/original/file-20180915-177953-1qv2pkq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236495/original/file-20180915-177953-1qv2pkq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236495/original/file-20180915-177953-1qv2pkq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236495/original/file-20180915-177953-1qv2pkq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Once digitized, information about a fossil is available worldwide, while the specimen itself remains available to visiting researchers to make crucial observations or measurements.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Deniz Durmis, contract photographer for the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Understanding response to past change is not just restricted to fossils. For example, nearly a century ago the director of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, <a href="http://mvz.berkeley.edu/Grinnell.html">Joseph Grinnell</a> at the University of California, Berkeley, undertook systematic collections of mammals and birds across California. Subsequently, the museum <a href="http://mvz.berkeley.edu/Grinnell/index.html">re-surveyed those precise localities</a>, discovering major changes in the distribution of many species, including <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1805123115">loss of many bird species</a> in the Mojave Desert.</p>
<p>A key aspect of this work has been comparison of the DNA from the almost hundred-year-old museum specimens with DNA of animals alive today. The comparison revealed serious fragmentation of populations, and led to the identification of genetic changes in response to environmental change. Having the specimens is crucial to this kind of project.</p>
<p>This digital revolution is not just restricted to fossils and paleontology. It pertains to all museums collections. Curators and researchers are enormously <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.352.6287.762">excited by the power to be gained</a> as the museum collections of the world – from fossils to specimens from live-caught organisms – become accessible through the nascent digitization of our invaluable collections.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/102833/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Charles Marshall receives funding from the National Science Foundation. </span></em></p>
A tiny percentage of museums’ natural history holdings are on display. Very little of these vast archives is digitized and available online. But museums are working to change that.
Charles Marshall, Professor of Paleontology and Director of the University of California Museum of Paleontology, University of California, Berkeley
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/88672
2017-12-13T13:38:33Z
2017-12-13T13:38:33Z
Four ways natural history museums skew reality
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/197829/original/file-20171205-23037-1805re3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Em Campos / Shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Natural history museums are magical places. They inspire awe and wonder in the natural world and help us understand our place within the animal kingdom. Behind the scenes, many of them are also undertaking world-changing science with their collections.</p>
<p>But they are places for people, made by people. We might like to consider them logical places, centred on facts, but they can’t tell all the facts – there isn’t room. Similarly, they can’t show all the animals. And there are reasons behind what goes on display and what gets left in the storeroom.</p>
<p>The biases that can be detected in how people talk about animals, particularly in museums is one of the key themes of my new book, <a href="http://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/publication/animal-kingdom/9780750981521/">Animal Kingdom: A Natural History in 100 Objects</a>. Museums are a product of their own history, and that of the societies they are embedded in. They are not apolitical, and they are not entirely scientific. As such, they don’t really represent reality.</p>
<h2>1. Where are all the small animals?</h2>
<p>Museums are overwhelmingly biased towards big beasts. It’s not difficult to see why – who can fail to be awed by the sight of a <a href="http://www.nhm.ac.uk/about-us/news/2017/july/museum-unveils-hope-the-blue-whale-skeleton.html">25 metre-long blue whale</a>? Dinosaurs, elephants, tigers and walruses are spectacular: they ooze presence. It is easy for museums to instil a sense of wonder with animals like this. They are the definition of impressive.</p>
<p>And so these are the kind of specimens that fill museum galleries. But they only represent a tiny sliver of global diversity. Invertebrate species (animals without backbones) outnumber vertebrates by more than <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=SBhLDgAAQBAJ&lpg=PA422&ots=jeHleEB2hD&dq=invertebrates%20outnumber%20vertebrates%20by%20twenty%20to%20one&pg=PA422#v=onepage&q&f=false">20 to one</a> in the real world, but in museums I’d be surprised if 10% of displays focused on them.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/197943/original/file-20171206-894-lk6jng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/197943/original/file-20171206-894-lk6jng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/197943/original/file-20171206-894-lk6jng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197943/original/file-20171206-894-lk6jng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197943/original/file-20171206-894-lk6jng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197943/original/file-20171206-894-lk6jng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197943/original/file-20171206-894-lk6jng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197943/original/file-20171206-894-lk6jng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Micrarium at the Grant Museum of Zoology, UCL, attempts to give some space to tiny animals.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">UCL Grant Museum of Zoology / Matt Clayton</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>2. Where are all the females?</h2>
<p>If we think about the sex ratio of animal specimens in museum galleries, the males are thoroughly over-represented. Curator of Natural Science at Leeds Museum Discovery Centre, Rebecca Machin, published <a href="https://journals.le.ac.uk/ojs1/index.php/mas/article/view/112">a case study</a> in 2008 of a typical natural history gallery and found that only 29% of the mammals, and 34% of the birds were female. To some extent this can be explained by the fact that hunters and collectors were more inclined to acquire – and been seen to overcome – animals with big horns, antlers, tusks or showy plumage, which typically is the male of the species. But can this display bias be excused? It is a misrepresentation of nature.</p>
<p>Machin also found that if male and female specimens of the same species were displayed together, the males were typically positioned in a domineering pose over the female, or just simply higher than her on the shelf. This was irrespective of biological realities.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/197946/original/file-20171206-917-uxqx9a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/197946/original/file-20171206-917-uxqx9a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197946/original/file-20171206-917-uxqx9a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197946/original/file-20171206-917-uxqx9a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197946/original/file-20171206-917-uxqx9a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197946/original/file-20171206-917-uxqx9a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197946/original/file-20171206-917-uxqx9a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ice age giant deer are a mainstay of natural history museums - the males’ antlers approached four metres across.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">UCL Grant Museum of Zoology / Oliver Siddons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Looking at the ways in which the specimens had been interpreted – even in labels that have been written very recently – she found that the role of the female animal was typically described as a mother, while the male came across as the hunter or at least had a broader role unrelated to parenting. We have to wonder what messages this might give museum visitors about the role of the female.</p>
<h2>3. Where is all the gross stuff?</h2>
<p>When it comes to animal groups that people consider cute – particularly mammals – why is it that specimens preserved in jars are displayed less regularly than taxidermy? I suspect that one reason is that – unlike taxidermy – fluid preservation cannot hide the fact that the animal is obviously dead. It is likely that museums shy away from displaying mammals in jars – which are very common in their storerooms – because visitors find them more disturbing and cruel than the alternatives.</p>
<p>I have encountered few objects that cause visitors to have such a strong negative response than the bisected cat below, displayed in the Grant Museum of Zoology at UCL, and this is interesting too. They seem more concerned about this cat than when they are confronted with the preserved remains of endangered, exotic creatures. The human connection with this species is so strong that many people find it challenging to see them preserved in a museum.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/197949/original/file-20171206-920-czcntu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/197949/original/file-20171206-920-czcntu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197949/original/file-20171206-920-czcntu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197949/original/file-20171206-920-czcntu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197949/original/file-20171206-920-czcntu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197949/original/file-20171206-920-czcntu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197949/original/file-20171206-920-czcntu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Most museums wouldn’t display this, for fear of upsetting people.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">UCL Grant Museum of Zoology / Oliver Siddons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There are other reasons to think that museum curators modify their displays to cater to the sensibilities of their visitors. </p>
<p>The majority of mammal species, for example, have a bone in their penis. Despite the prevalence of skeletons of these animals in museum displays, it is extraordinarily rare to see one with its penis bone attached. One reason for this is the presumed prudishness of the curators, who would remove the penis bone before putting them on display (another is that they are easy to lose when de-fleshing a skeleton).</p>
<h2>4. Colonial skews</h2>
<p>There is real unevenness in which parts of the world the animals in our museums come from. The logistics of visiting exotic locations means that some places were easier to arrange transport to than others, and there may also have been some political motivation to increase knowledge of a particular region.</p>
<p>Knowledge of a country’s natural history equates to knowledge of the potential resources – be they animal, vegetable or mineral – that could be exploited there. Collecting became part of the act of colonisation; staking a claim of possession. For these reasons, collections are often extremely biased by diplomatic relationships between nations. In the UK, it is easy to observe the bias of the former British Empire in what we have in our museums, and that is true of any country with a similar history. Collections of Australian species in British museums dwarf what we hold from China, for example.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/197951/original/file-20171206-915-1rzv5yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/197951/original/file-20171206-915-1rzv5yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197951/original/file-20171206-915-1rzv5yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197951/original/file-20171206-915-1rzv5yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197951/original/file-20171206-915-1rzv5yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197951/original/file-20171206-915-1rzv5yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197951/original/file-20171206-915-1rzv5yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">British museums have more platypuses than you might expect.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">UCL Grant Museum of Zoology / Tony Slade</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Museums are rightly celebrated as places of wonder and curiosity, and also science and learning. But if we look closely we can see that there are human biases in the way nature is represented. The vast majority of these are harmless foibles, but not all. </p>
<p>My hope is that when people visit museums they may be able to consider the human stories behind the displays they see. They might consider the question of why is all that stuff there: what is that museum – or that specimen – doing? What is it for? Why has someone decided it deserves to take up the finite space in the cabinet?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88672/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jack Ashby is a Trustee of the Natural Sciences Collections Association and the Society for the History of Natural History.</span></em></p>
Museums are not apolitical, and they are not entirely scientific. As such, they don’t really represent reality.
Jack Ashby, Manager of the Grant Museum of Zoology, UCL
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/84740
2017-09-27T10:09:54Z
2017-09-27T10:09:54Z
Most museums are too chicken to celebrate ‘boring beasts’ – but we’re not
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187608/original/file-20170926-13681-umkfz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">© UCL Grant Museum of Zoology / Jazmine Miles-Long</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Walking the galleries of a natural history museum, you might be left with the impression that not all animals were created equally. (Of course, if you study the displays about evolution, they’ll tell you that they weren’t <em>created</em> at all.) There is a noticeable bias in what kinds of animals museums choose to display: on the whole, the huge, exotic, rare and extraordinary get more than their fair share of shelf-space.</p>
<p>As a result, natural history museum galleries are not accurate reflections of the nature they might be thought to represent. Around <a href="http://www.mapress.com/zootaxa/2013/f/zt03703p026.pdf">80% of described species</a> are arthropods – the group that contains insects, crustaceans and arachnids; and around <a href="https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/artful-amoeba/parasitic-roundworms-own-this-place/">80% of living individual animals</a> are nematode worms. As is commonly argued by specialists in these fields, these ecologically and numerically dominant groups are not given the attention they statistically deserve.</p>
<p>But there is another group that is also regularly banished from most museums: those more mundane animals that feature heavily in our everyday lives, as pets, livestock and scientific subjects. They are not deemed special enough. Do people want to go to a museum to see animals that we can find on our plates, on our laps and on our streets? It is thought that we would rather see dinosaurs, dodos and <a href="http://www.nhm.ac.uk/about-us/news/2017/july/museum-unveils-hope-the-blue-whale-skeleton.html">giant whales</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187609/original/file-20170926-22303-1e6prxw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187609/original/file-20170926-22303-1e6prxw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187609/original/file-20170926-22303-1e6prxw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187609/original/file-20170926-22303-1e6prxw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187609/original/file-20170926-22303-1e6prxw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187609/original/file-20170926-22303-1e6prxw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187609/original/file-20170926-22303-1e6prxw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lab strain mice skins.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© UCL Grant Museum of Zoology / Oliver Siddons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>So these animals are rarely represented in natural history museum displays. That is why we at UCL’s <a href="https://www.ucl.ac.uk/culture/grant-museum">Grant Museum of Zoology</a> have dedicated an exhibition to these somewhat sidelined creatures – to give them a chance to tell their stories. By staging this exhibition, which we have called <a href="https://www.ucl.ac.uk/culture/projects/museum-ordinary-animals">The Museum of Ordinary Animals</a>, we want to highlight the boring beasts that have changed the world, including dogs, rats, cats, cows, chickens and mice. </p>
<p>Ordinary animals are everywhere, and the ways they interact with our lives are endless and varied. We have invited them into our homes as pets; their role in our diets has changed us biologically; they are critical to modern medicine and they hold huge symbolic value in many cultures. These animals have had profound impacts on humanity and the natural world, and we have learned extraordinary things from them.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187610/original/file-20170926-10935-cnlvzl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187610/original/file-20170926-10935-cnlvzl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187610/original/file-20170926-10935-cnlvzl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187610/original/file-20170926-10935-cnlvzl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187610/original/file-20170926-10935-cnlvzl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187610/original/file-20170926-10935-cnlvzl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187610/original/file-20170926-10935-cnlvzl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Preserved domestic cat.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© UCL Grant Museum of Zoology / Oliver Siddons</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Creating animals</h2>
<p>While (most) natural history museums are dedicated to communicating that the species on display are a product of evolution, many of these ordinary animals were in fact <em>created</em>: they have come into existence through unnatural means. Humans have been domesticating animals ever since <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/06/the-origin-of-dogs/484976/">dogs were formed from wolves</a>, though the process was often not deliberate.</p>
<p>Other domestic species <em>were</em> deliberately brought into being, at least to some extent. The breeding of livestock such as cattle, goats and sheep would ease the growing human population’s problem of the over-hunting of wild animals. Others still, such as domestic hamsters, were only created in recent decades, to fill human scientific and aesthetic desires (they were <a href="http://www.petmd.com/exotic/care/evr_ex_hm_hamster-habitats-where-do-hamsters-live">intended as lab animals</a> before they became pets).</p>
<p>So is their “unnaturalness” the reason why ordinary animals have largely been removed from natural history museums? The concept of some animals being outside the boundaries of “nature” is an interesting one (it’s worth saying that some people argue that humans are a natural species, and therefore everything we do is “natural”, but I think that’s a dead end, as it renders the already abstract concept of nature meaningless). The natural history of these species is not the same as the rest of the animal kingdom’s. We can think of them more in the context of social history, as their stories are so utterly intertwined with our own.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187599/original/file-20170926-13681-10i4gh7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187599/original/file-20170926-13681-10i4gh7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187599/original/file-20170926-13681-10i4gh7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187599/original/file-20170926-13681-10i4gh7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187599/original/file-20170926-13681-10i4gh7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187599/original/file-20170926-13681-10i4gh7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187599/original/file-20170926-13681-10i4gh7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Taxidermy chicken.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© UCL Grant Museum of Zoology / Jazmine Miles-Long</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Studying chickens, for example, allows the worlds of evolution, archaeology, genetics and theology to interweave. UCL geneticist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_G._Thomas">Mark Thomas</a>, who contributed to the exhibition, <a href="https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/doi/10.1093/molbev/msx142/3746559/Inferring-allele-frequency-trajectories-from">tells us that</a> around 1,000 years ago, there was massive evolutionary pressure for domestic chickens to be able to lay eggs all year round and to be less aggressive (allowing for the confinement of many individuals in a small space). At the same time, chicken bones become significantly more common in the archaeological record, showing that people were eating more of them.</p>
<p>Remarkably, this coincides with a decree from Benedictine monks to avoid eating four-legged animals on fast days. Birds and eggs were exempt. Although chickens were first domesticated around 6,000 years ago, the features that essentially led to the chickens we know today (including battery hens), were arguably brought about by a religious diktat.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187601/original/file-20170926-10570-1pfma0c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187601/original/file-20170926-10570-1pfma0c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187601/original/file-20170926-10570-1pfma0c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187601/original/file-20170926-10570-1pfma0c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187601/original/file-20170926-10570-1pfma0c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187601/original/file-20170926-10570-1pfma0c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187601/original/file-20170926-10570-1pfma0c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Vials containing mouse skeletons.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© UCL Grant Museum of Zoology / Oliver Siddons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Among the most ubiquitous of ordinary animals is the house mouse, originally from India. We have a collection of around 9,000 house mouse skeletons in the Grant Museum, collected from islands around the world: humans have given them near global distribution. The skeletons are the result of a study into the effects of island living on evolution. Museum storerooms are full of such objects: but they are intended for research, not display.</p>
<p>When we visit museums we have the chance to see that evolution has produced some extraordinary species and mind-blowing diversity: it is these exotic and glamorous animals that we tend to find on display. But it’s important to remember that the more ordinary species - which are often the product of human intervention as much as evolution – also have incredible stories to tell us.</p>
<hr>
<p><em><a href="https://www.ucl.ac.uk/culture/projects/museum-ordinary-animals">The Museum of Ordinary Animals</a> runs until December 22 at the Grant Museum of Zoology, UCL, London.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84740/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jack Ashby does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Dogs, rats, cats, cows, chickens and mice have also changed the world.
Jack Ashby, Manager of the Grant Museum of Zoology, UCL
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/70966
2017-01-09T15:09:36Z
2017-01-09T15:09:36Z
How to flat-pack a dinosaur
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/152093/original/image-20170109-23482-1qhv5xa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Trustees of the NHM, London</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>After more than 100 years of residency in London’s Natural History Museum, the world famous cast of a <em>Diplodocus carnegii</em> skeleton, known as “Dippy”, is going <a href="http://www.nhm.ac.uk/about-us/national-impact/diplodocus-on-tour.html">on tour</a> to inspire and educate more people than ever before. </p>
<p>The prospect of moving a world-famous museum specimen like Dippy is a daunting one and presents a unique set of challenges. And behind the tour of the 21.3 metre-long sauropod superstar to museums, community centres and even cathedrals, will be an entourage of handlers, fixers and “make-up artists” to ensure everything goes smoothly.</p>
<p>It may sound like a rather obvious statement but moving a giant dinosaur is not an easy task. I saw this for myself last year when I was lucky enough to film with David Attenborough in Argentina. We joined Diego Pol and his team from the Museo Paleontologico Egidio Feruglio after the discovery and excavation of seven skeletons belonging to a brand new species, a type of titanosaur that later turned out to be the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/earth/story/20160201-meet-the-most-massive-dinosaur-to-ever-stomp-the-earth">largest of all the dinosaurs</a>.</p>
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<p>Of course I marvelled at the 8ft-long femurs and vertebrae almost as tall as myself. But what surprised me more were the methods by which the team secured and transported the 140m-year-old fossilised bones. After the team used mechanical diggers and noisy pneumatic drills to remove the hundreds of tonnes of sand and rock, they swapped for trowels and brushes to tenderly separate the fossils from their surroundings.</p>
<p>Then, in order to transport the fossils, each one was wrapped in wet toilet roll. Yes, toilet roll. Hundreds and hundreds of metres went into wrapping up each specimen. There was so much loo roll that you could cover a football pitch with the stuff. It allowed the team to wrap the fossils with a soft protective membrane that would cover the delicate contours perfectly.</p>
<p>Plaster of Paris was then added, layer by layer. Although fossils are made of rock, they can be surprisingly fragile and need to be protected. Each one was then lifted onto the back of a truck and transported back to the museum, some four or five hours away by road. Only there wasn’t a road for much of the first part of the journey, so the team actually had to construct a road to transport the precious cargo safely. </p>
<p>Fossils are moved and transported for a variety of reasons, and are always done so with the utmost of care. Isla Gladstone is senior curator for the Natural Sciences collections at the Bristol Museum & Art Gallery and is responsible for a huge fossil specimen going on show this year. “We’re currently preparing to display the fossil skeleton of an 8m-long pliosaur for an exhibition this summer,” she told me. </p>
<p>“Work to move it began after its discovery in a clay pit in 1994. The museum helped excavate huge blocks of rock containing its bones and removed them using diggers and fork-lifts. Ten years’ delicate work followed to chip away the rock and release over 100 fossil pieces.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/152094/original/image-20170109-29708-1kjpm5t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/152094/original/image-20170109-29708-1kjpm5t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152094/original/image-20170109-29708-1kjpm5t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152094/original/image-20170109-29708-1kjpm5t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152094/original/image-20170109-29708-1kjpm5t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152094/original/image-20170109-29708-1kjpm5t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152094/original/image-20170109-29708-1kjpm5t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Giant jigsaw.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Trustees of the NHM, London</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Delicate operation</h2>
<p>It is clear that excavating fossils is a delicate and risky task but this is only half the work that needs to be done. The actual <a href="https://naturalhistory.si.edu/exhibits/backyard-dinosaurs/reconstructing-animals.cfm">articulation of the fossil bones</a> to create an impressive 3D jigsaw-like display is equally tricky.</p>
<p>Made up of 292 bones, Dippy is actually a plaster cast of the original skeleton, rather than the fossils themselves. While it may be easy to think that Dippy is a cast and not a “real” skeleton, the cast is still hugely important in its own rights. </p>
<p>Palaeontologist and renowned fossil preparator Nigel Larkin believes that the biggest problem with Dippy is not just the size but the age and material of the casts. “I was involved in dismantling the tail and replacing the rear legs when the tail was raised off the floor in the mid 1990s,” he said. “The <a href="http://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/diplodocus-this-is-your-life.html">casts are very old</a> and made of plaster. That means they are now very brittle.”</p>
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</figure>
<p>Casts should, and normally do, have the <a href="http://gimpasaura.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/fossil-casts-are-not-fake.html">same status as real fossils</a> and are specimens in their own right. Often, a cast is all you have available to study, as the original may be on the other side of the world. And in some cases, the actual fossil has actually subsequently been lost or destroyed.</p>
<p>Larkin says that mounting the actual fossils is no easier, as they are typically fragile and very heavy. “The ethics of mounting fossils in museums mean that no holes can be drilled in to them. They have to be held in position securely with external materials, lined with (specialised) archival foam where it would otherwise touch the fossil.”</p>
<p>But museums still want any mounted dinosaur to actually <a href="http://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/how-to-clean-a-diplodocus.html">look good</a>, and Steve Brusatte (a palaeontologist at the University of Edinburgh) believes this an equally important consideration. “The biggest problems with mounting fossils – particularly skeletons – is not just the sheer weight of the specimen but also making the mount-work as unobtrusive as possible,” he said. “This is obviously a difficult balancing act both aesthetically and literally.”</p>
<p>As Dippy hits the road and tours the UK, spare a thought about all the work that needs to go into excavating dinosaur fossils and mounting them or their casts. Making the casts is a <a href="http://preparation.paleo.amnh.org/36/molding-and-casting">whole story in itself</a>, now involving lasers, robots and multi-bladed machines. Have a think the next time you’re in a museum about how you would make sure the skeleton is both physically safe and looking as lifelike and inspiring as possible.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/70966/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ben Garrod does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The Natural History Museum’s ‘Dippy’ the diplodocus skeleton is about to be become a giant 3D jigsaw.
Ben Garrod, Fellow, Animal and Environmental Biology, Anglia Ruskin University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.