When you hang around museums and their interesting people, you hear some odd things. Most of these raise more questions than they answer. Me to a fellow artist: "You have the best collection of mummified rats I've ever seen. Even better than mine." At a folk museum: "We need your help. Everything seems to have gone wrong since a foursome, when the other couple left us this... we think it is cursed." Over coffee: "You have to consider when the beheading happened. It's difficul

I love the Grant's Museum. And I love their blog. And this week, I love their specimen of the week. A jar of moles. I looked up the collective nouns for moles; a labour, a movement or a company of moles. None of them really work as well as the simple description of a jar of moles. I can't add anything except our museums are crammed with interesting things, sometimes those things themselves are crammed. (Thanks to the Grant's Museum blog for this image. I wish it was mine... b

As I research my dissertation on art and anatomy, I am being very willingly forced to spend hours pouring over books of historical anatomy museums. This month is the turn of the Vrolik Museum in Amsterdam. I often find these wonderful museums, seen as distasteful in recent years, has a poor website not at all reflecting the glory of its collections. Fortunately for me, there is a book, some lovely photos from morbid anatomy's blog, and mundieart, though the best photo I've se

Another of the wonderful, imaginative anatomy preparations from the Horniman Museum. This is one of the series of animals (bat, hedgehog, rabbit) which appears to have been prepared by grabbing it by the feet on the right hand side, and dipping it half way into fierce acid until everything is gone but the bone. Sort of like cooking a doughnut on only one side (see 1 min 34 secs into this useful video). Of course this ISN'T how this preparation was made. I'm only guessing here

I never fail to be astonished by the weird and wonderful things out on display in museums that people don't even notice. And the infinite variety of ways that zoologists and anatomists find to slice up and bottle animals. I finally got the combination of time, energy and a willing accomplice to visit the Horniman Museum. I heard about the marvellous walrus years ago, and have long wanted to visit. (If you haven't heard of it, imagine a bewildered taxidermist being supplied wi

Years after first hearing about it, the circumstances have come together that, next week, I will finally get to visit the Horniman Museum, and it's famous walrus. (Image courtesy of the Horniman Museum) It is such a star, it even has its own twitter account. Wondering why it is so special? Or what looks so odd about it? It is a wonderful example of taxidermy performed without knowing what the animal looked like. So the taxidermist just filled the skin. Compare this to a walr