What's On at UCL Museums & Collections

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

The 5th annual Slade/UCL Art Museum collaboration began with an invitation to today's artists to develop their own practices while exploring and responding to art from the past. With the Museum's vast collections of award-winning works by Slade alumni as well as works by revered Old Masters situated only minutes away from the artists' studios, this collaboration presents a unique opportunity for a dialogue across time through which to explore new ideas.

02076792540 | college.art@ucl.ac.uk

Smart, Connected and Participatory explores how emerging technologies are changing the way we access and experience culture and asks questions about the nature of art and technology. New digital applications are shaping our daily lives; the way we live, work, and study, but is digital technology really new? Digital Frontiers unravels digital culture, illustrates the power of emerging applications and poses questions about technology and culture in the past and in the present.

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