Grant Museum Exhibitions
The Micrarium | On now |Previous Exhibitions
The Micrarium: A Place for Tiny Things
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 built The 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.
Video and more information are on the UCL News page and there are a number of posts about it over on our blog.
On now
"VIEWPOINT" BY SARAH CAMERON
Artist Sarah Cameron
from the UCL Slade School of Fine Art was commissioned to develop a
huge mural for the Grant Museum's foyer. What she came up with was a
trompe l'oeil of a museum cabinet filled with our objects.
The
painting has been made so that from the angle and height of the
artist’s eye, the solid wall looks like a three dimensional cabinet,
enticing the viewer – in a quest to align and distort the illusion – to a
position of questioning.
The shifting perspective is
indicative of the individual nature of peoples’ experiences of the
collection. This runs parallel to the Museum’s perceived role: the
pursuit of taxonomic investigation. The collection is modified according
to its viewer.
The painting was made without the use of digital
aids, grids or formulae. You can read more about the artistic concept
and process here.
ADDING TO THE GRANT MUSEUM: RECENT ACQUISITIONS
Visitors often ask whether we ever add to the collection. This mini-exhibition displays some of the specimens we have acquired recently, and explains why we only accept things that we can use, and that we have to say “no” to most objects we are offered.
Ongoing
QRator: Current Questions and iPads
The Grant Museum is a centre for discussion and dialogue.
Ten of our displays have iPads attached asking visitors to get involved
in conversations about the role of science in society and how museum
should be run. Visitors can respond on our iPads, on their own smart
phones using QR codes or the Tales of Things App, via Twitter using #GrantQR and @uclmuseums or on their home computers.
Get involved in the conversations at http://www.qrator.org/
These questions will change every few months. The project - called QRator - has been developed in partnership with UCL Centre for Advanced Spacial Analysis and UCL Digital Humanities, funded by UCL Public Engagement Unit.
Previous Exhibitions
It Came from the Stores
- July- August 2012
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Only 5% of the Grant Museum collection is on display in the museum, the rest of the collection is material not suitable for display but is used in teaching and research. Many visitors ask us about our stored collections and this pigeon hole installation displays a small selection of material otherwise undisplayable….. until now.
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Buried on Campus
April-July 2012
A huge mass of human bones was discovered in UCL during construction
work in 2010. This installation displays the investigations undertaken
to discover what they are and why they were buried. Remains of at least
84 individual people and many animals have been identified. Uncover
where they came from and what we can learn from them in this unusual
exhibition co-curated by UCL forensic anatomists and osteologists.
The UCL News article can be found here: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/1204/120423-buried-on-campus
Art by Animals
February-April 2012
Do animals make art? This exhibition includes paintings by apes and
elephants and examines whether they are artistic works or just pointless
lines on a page.
Placing their handiwork alongside animal specimens and historical
documentation we explore why some animal creations are considered
valuable and creative, while others are dismissed as meaningless.
Here is a video about the exhibition:
Fish in Science: Zebrafish at UCL
October - December 2011
Fish have been used in science since the early 20th century. Working with the UCL Zebrafish Facility,
the Grant Museum's new pigeon hole exhibition looks at the role of fish
in science, focusing on zebrafish. Because of the transparency of the
embryos and their high reproductive rate, zebrafish became a popular
species for developmental biology in the late 1970s. More recently this
popularity has extended to human disease research such as cancer and
tissue regeneration studies - including cardiac and spinal regeneration.
A Crucial Difference: Celebrating Diversity in Nature
7th April - 30th June 2010
Click here to view the exhibition website
An exhibition investigating the amazing differences between similar objects in natural history collections - why are they important, why were they collected and what can we learn from them?
