What's On at UCL Museums & Collections

The first ever exhibition in the Octagon Gallery is Model Translations. This exhibition showcases objects – some never displayed before – from the art, anthropology, archaeology, engineering, pathology and zoology collections. These objects reveal creative encounters and explorations between scholars and the natural and made environment, but at times materialise world views that are problematic and difficult to reconcile today. Five of UCL's Mellon Fellows – Antony Hudek, Sarah Byrne, Federica Mazzara, Richard Mole and Claire Thomson – have chosen a selection of objects that speak to, and translate, different aspects of their own research. This exhibition is supported by the Andrew W Mellon Foundation of New York.

020 7679 3163 | sussanah.chan@ucl.ac.uk

UCL Art Museum is delighted to present Plastered, an exhibition about plaster and the casting process highlighting the sculpture models of the neoclassical artist John Flaxman (1755-1826). A pioneer during an age of industrialism, Flaxman was the first British sculptor to use the technique as a consistent part of his working practice, revealing early on the material’s extraordinary versatility.

Shown alongside Flaxman’s art will be more unusual applications of plaster, including Victorian death masks used for the early study of eugenics and casts of human pathological specimens from the Great Ormond Street Hospital Collection.

020 7679 2540 | college.art@ucl.ac.uk

The Micrarium is a place for tiny things - somewhere to come and explore the microscopic specimens at the Grant Museum.

It’s often said that 95% of known animal species are smaller than your thumb, but have you noticed how most museums fill their displays with big animals? We intend to right this wrong, and in January 2013 we’ll be building a Micrarium.

We have converted an old office/storeroom into a beautiful back-lit cave displaying some of the tiniest specimens in the collection, on wall-to-wall microscope slides. Museums very rarely display objects like this, and we are experimenting with an aesthetic way of doing so.

020 3108 2052 | zoology.museum@ucl.ac.uk

Where do we end and the object world begin?

An exhibition curated by UCL Researchers in Museums, re-interpreting the university collections through the theme of ‘foreign bodies’. Through seven very different research projects, audiences are invited to explore the idea of what is alien – biologically, psychologically, socially and politically – and how this concept has shifted across history, culture and even species.

A sword that fatally wounded a sword swallower; ingested coins and nails; parasites and ticks are displayed alongside objects that enter the body through less conventional ways. Ink, introduced into the skin to create tattoos, may also inadvertently introduce dangerous microorganisms. The tattooed body has itself often been used to highlight difference: the way we define ourselves by first defining the ‘other’. Similarly, primates may be considered to be the ultimate foreign bodies, against which we define what it is to be human.

An exhibition trail leading visitors through UCL Museums to discover other "foreign bodies" hidden within the collections, will be take place once a week during museums opening hours. Each Friday at 2pm (from April 5th), a curator-led tour will begin in the North Cloisters, highlighting different parts of the trail.

Image taken on behalf of Engle Entertainment for 'The Mummy Road Show' on National Geographic


Website: blogs.ucl.ac.uk/researchers-in-museums/foreign-bodies/
Twitter: @ResearchEngager

researchersinmuseums@ucl.ac.uk