This February, Museum Collections Assistant Matt Riley and Artist Catherine Watling visited Cherry Trees Age Concern Centre in Cambridge to question what motivates people to collect. Together they found that collections can teach us about the world around us and about the people who collected them.
From an early age Charles Darwin was an avid collector. Throughout his life he was fascinated by the natural world around him, so he collected specimens, made observations and took detailed notes.
The pensioners from Cherry Trees Age Concern Centre were asked to bring in some of their own collections and to describe them to the group. The collections varied from cuddly sheep to postage stamps and everyone had a different reason for collecting. Many of the objects held memories for the owners’ of holidays, friends or late relatives. Others simply loved their objects for the way they looked.
Visitors to the sessions were also shown specimens from the Sedgwick Museum handling collection. They were able to touch and hold fossils up to 300 million years old and were asked to identify them if they could.
The fossils ranged from the very familiar like snail shells and leaves, to the relatively unfamiliar like trilobites and belemnites.
Matt Riley, Collections Assistant at the Museum said, “It was great to see them so enthusiastic and still keen to learn new things.”
These workshops inspired Catherine Watling’s ‘Collect’ art installation which can be viewed at the Sedgwick Museum from Saturday 14th March.
Last Saturday an audience of 50 adults and older children were treated to the first performance of Geoff Hales’ one-man show ‘The Voyage of Charles Darwin’. The show was part of the Rockwatch activity day at the Sedgwick Museum and the script was written with experts from the Museum.
Dr Francis Neary ‘Darwin the Geologist’ Project Manager said, ‘In a setting like the Sedgwick Museum, we wanted the piece to go beyond the well-known episodes from Darwin’s early life and the Beagle Voyage. So we advised Geoff on how he could include Darwin’s early passion for geology in the story.’
The show is set in 1858 as Darwin receives a surprise letter from Alfred Rusell Wallace from Malaysia. The letter outlines a remarkably similar idea to the theory of natural selection that Darwin has been developing for 20 years. At this crunch time in Darwin’s career, Darwin looks back at his formative influences in Shrewsbury, Edinburgh, Cambridge and some of the wonderful locations that he visited on the Beagle.
This pilot performance was well recieved, ‘Darwin became more real, more of a person with his own hopes and fears’ said one delighted visitor. Geoff now plans to develop a new show that will feature Charles Darwin and his wife, Emma.
This month, the cabinets of the exhibition area are being restored by master furnature conservator, Anthony Beech.
Anthony is working on the locks, the frames and the casing of the hundred-year-old mahogany cabinets to take them back to a better-than-new condition.
Anthony wrote to us with his impressions of working in the Museum: “One of the great pleasures of my work is the unusual places I have the opportunity to work in. The Sedgwick museum is no exception; in fact it has become one of my favourites, where else would you while checking the operation of a drawer find the head and foot of a Dodo?
The other great pleasure is the pure quality of the cabinet making. Most visitors will be surprised and delighted by the ammonites and dinosaur skeletons but the cases in which many of the objects are housed are of great interest in themselves. One can appreciate the evolution from the Woodwardian walnut cabinets of the 17th century to the later 19th century oak and mahogany examples with great glazed doors and complex locking mechanisms.
My favourite thing about working behind the barrier in the museum is the moment when the smallest of visitors comes through the door and says in a voice full of awe “DINOSAUR!” followed by a remarkably convincing roar.
I very much look forward to returning to see the installed exhibition and finding more inspiration amongst the objects.”
In 2009 Sedgwick Museum curators will be unveiling some cutting-edge technology with the Darwin the Geologist exhibition. This is the exhibition team’s most recent purchase, a Magic Planet® globe.
This shiny bauble uses an internal projection fish eye lense to play back images of the planet in motion. The Darwin team intend to use it to illustrate the voyage of HMS Beagle around the world.
Visitors will also be able to interact with the globe through controls on its stand, bringing up locations and information about places that Darwin visited and collected in.
Museum educators are excited that the globe can also play back animations of NASA images of changing conditions on planet Earth and other planets.
Come see it in action when the exhibition opens in July 2009!
On Saturday the 6th December the Sedgwick Museum invited visitors to join in with an ambitious craft project and crochet a model coral reef. The day included a range of hands-on coral-realted activities and a temporary display of corals from the Museum’s stores. The colourful woolen reef has been on display in the Museum ever since.
Project coordinator, Katherine Antoniw explains why the Sedgwick Museum staff began work on this unusual construction, ‘We wanted to usher in 2009 by celebrating one of Charles Darwin’s less well known theories - the formation of coral reefs around ocean islands. What better way than by making a reef of our own?’
Years before he wrote about the origin of species, Charles Darwin wrote about how reefs form around volcanic islands and eventually turn into atolls as the volcanoes sink below the sea. If you think this was a less controversial subject, you might be surprised to learn that this theory was debated for years after Darwin’s death. Darwin’s detractors were eventually silenced over a century after the theory was published. In 1952 scientists took rock samples from deep under the coral reef of Enewetak Atoll in the Pacific Ocean and came up with the volcanic rock that finally proved Darwin right.
The Sedgwick reef rests at the foot of a volcanic island constructed by Simon Crowhurst, a member of the Department of Earth Sciences and long-time supporter of the Museum. The reef itself has been crocheted by Museum staff, visitors and staff and student volunteers from across the University. Conservator Sarah Finney thinks that this is one of the key ways the crochet project has mirrored nature, ‘Reefs are formed by communities of animals, our reef has been made by a community too.’
If you want to find out how to contribute your own coral or make your own reef, just print out the information sheet below and contact kant06@esc.cam.ac.uk
On Saturday a group of teenagers held an intimate audience of academics and curious visitors rapt with their poetical insights into Charles Darwin. The performance marked the culmination of an intensive poetry workshop caried out over two days at the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences.
The Year 11 students were tutored in both poetry and performance by poets from the Roundhouse Theatre, London, Jacob Sam-La Rose and Jasmine Cooray. Further inspiration was provided by Museum staff and Department of Earth Sciences academics giving the students a glimpse into the varied histories behind the Darwin collections held at the Sedgwick. In a series of half-hour sessions the students explored the science behind studying the collections, the ways in which Darwin might have found out about his finds and the responsibilities of interpreting and caring for these historic objects.
The poems that came from these sessions surprised and delighted hardened academics and Museum staff alike. Subjects ranged from the psychadelic play of cross-polarised light on a microscope slide to the relationship between Darwin and Henslow.
The night was run as part of the Cambrigdge Festival of Ideas. It was also an early milestone in the runup to the Darwin 2009 festival to be held in Cambridge next summer. The best of the poems will be printed in a CUP booklet to be published in conjunction with the Sedgwick Museum’s ‘Darwin, Becoming a Geologist’ exhibition.
While collections staff at the museum are busy dealing with outgoing loans, exhibition staff are arranging to borrow objects to grace the displays of the Darwin the Geologist exhibition. In the latest of these negotiations, English Heritage curators have agreed to loan the Museum a significant notebook from Tierra del Fuego.
Darwin wrote a prodigious number of research notes during his voyage around the world on board the HMS Beagle, filling a dizzying array of notebooks and catalogues. The Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences already holds the Dry Specimen Catalogues from this voyage with detailed descriptions of all the rocks and fossils Darwin collected on his journey. Darwin’s set of 15 field notebooks are the notepads Darwin took with him on his collecting trips on shore, they contain his most immediate impressions and direct observations from the places he visited. The majority are held in Down House, Darwin’s family home in Kent, with the exception of one missing volume that disappeared in the latter half of the twentieth century.
The loan will become part of a rotating display of Darwin’s notebooks in Cambridge with a different field notebook on display after six months. Exhibition assistant, Katherine Antoniw sets the scene: “We want to showcase the book as part of a reconstruction of Darwin’s cabin on board the Beagle, displaying a day in the life of a great collector”.
As the Darwin bicentenary creeps ever closer, Sedgwick Museum collections staff are dealing with a flurry of loan requests from museums all over the world. Earlier this year the Osaka Museum of Natural History, Japan asked for some of Darwin’s specimens to display in the American Museum of Natural History’s touring Darwin exhibit. This July, conservator Sarah Finney embarked on a 5864 mile journey to Osaka to deliver four of our Beagle Collection rocks safely to the museum.
When sending objects for display so far from home some major physical and cultural differences have to be taken into consideration. Osaka is at risk from earthquakes so extra conservation precautions must be taken when displaying irreplaceable objects from Darwin’s collections. Also priorities are different for Japanese museum visitors – it was important for this display to contain something that had been touched by Darwin himself, something that is not often explicitly requested in a UK loan.
The hand-picked specimens from Darwin’s personal collection will soon be redisplayed in the Canberra Museum of Natural History, Australia before returning to Cambridge in time for the opening of our own exhibition next July. Wherever you are in the world you might have a chance of spotting one of the Sedgwick’s prized objects over this coming year.
The end of August saw one of the major phases of the ‘Darwin the Geologist’ Project completed. It may seem like stating the obvious but before construction can begin on the new exhibition curators must ensure that there is actually space for it inside the Museum.
For Collections Assistant, Esther Sharp, making this space was not simply a case of moving specimens from the museum gallery (Bays 1 & 2) to the museum reserve store. Rather, in order to empty the cases Esther had to painstakingly record the shelf from which every specimen was being taken, and the exact location it was being taken to - enabling future curators to find the specimens.
As reported in March, work has been ongoing in the museum reserve store to increase its storage capacity, something which has been essential for the removal of specimens from the Sedgwick Museum. Finally, and after 11 months of work, the ‘Darwin the Geologist’ exhibition area is now empty, and awaiting preparation for the installation of its new exhibits.
Almost 800 specimens have now been moved, half of which were previously not catalogued. Although this leaves Bays 1 & 2 looking a little forlorn, preparations are already under way to rejuvenate this area, both inside and outside the cases, in anticipation of the new exhibition.
Where do museums come from? Why do people collect things? What can make a collection important? Our best researchers are still puzzled by questions like this but this Saturday the organisers of the Sedgwick Museum’s Curious Collectors day will be on hand to help visitors find some answers.
This Saturday (16th August) the Sedgwick Museum will give families the chance to join the ranks of curious collectors that have helped build the Museum and discover the it’s minerals, rocks and fossils. Visitors will be able to talk to experts who work at the Museum, take part in creative activities and meet some famous faces from the Museum’s past.
Museum staff have hired and trained actors to take on the parts of Adam Sedgwick, the museum’s founder, Charles Darwin, a young scientist just back from a major expedition, Mary Anning, a self taught marine reptile expert and William Wordsworth, a poet with a deep appreciation of geology. This is the first time the Sedgwick Museum has employed so many actors to take part in a live event. “We’ve chosen quite an explosive combination of characters, even we don’t know for sure how they’ll interact” claim Darwin project sources.
Entry to the Museum is free of charge, as are the activities. The Curious Collectors drawing activity is suitable for families and children of all ages. For more information see www.sedgwickmuseum.org or call (01223) 333456.
