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.
