Last week, we just had the highest visitation in our Museum’s more than hundred year history, up by 880% on our daily average. Families came streaming in, our regular visitors mixing happily with people who had never stepped foot through our doors. The place was filled with screams of delight, investigation, curiosity and laughter. All [...]
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Creepy things in my friend’s garden
I recently discovered that a friend of mine, let’s call him Noel, has a garden filled with carnivorous plants and other botanical oddities, which he cultivates with all the care of Charles Darwin (played by Vincent Price). There’s something wonderful about discovering this macabre side of one of your friends. Although I have yet to [...]
Something a bit different – a look at museum merchandising
I believe that most organisations would benefit by extending themselves into new territory every now and then. For cultural institutions there is, arguably, an expectation that they do so more responsively (or perhaps only more regularly) than other types of businesses. Think of the massive public appetite for new visitor experiences. Certainly in a highly [...]
Weird Armies
I just discovered, while doing some research, that the Dutch East India Company had a private army. I was surprised to discover that, assuming it had been more like Macy’s meets David Livingston. But it makes sense. Given their acquisitive agenda, coupled with the (quite reasonable) opinion of local people that they would rather keep [...]
Dissecting Play
This morning we launched the refresh of our exhibition Weird and Curious, or Just Plain Evil? at the Whanganui Regional Museum. It was a breakfast, and a chance for kids (and their parents) to give the newly revitalised exhibition a test run. We’ve changed a few objects in the exhibition, it’s true – the silver [...]
Mind Theft: Lady Gaga and Genetic Engineering
I just read on Twitter that Lady Gaga’s video Born This Way is being criticised as having being too close to Madonna’s Respect Yourself. I can see the point. Lady Gaga’s song really just makes me want to hear Madonna’s. Less reported, but equally intruiguing is the striking visual similarity between aspects of Bad Romance [...]
More on those salamanders
I thought I was done writing about salamanders, but two contributions stemming from the previous post have caused me to write this supplement. Both of these contributions, strangely, involve the culinary aspects of salamanders, which – perhaps unsurprisingly – I’d previously overlooked. The first was given to me by Emily Davidow, pointing out the work [...]
Finding Meaning in Salamanders
The greatest matter in the Salamander to be inquired after, is whether it can live and be nourished by and in the fire, or whether it can passe through the fire without any harme, or quench and put out the same. – Edward Topsell “History of Serpents” (1608) How could anybody think that a [...]
A Clutch of Vampires
In my last post, I wrote about immortality. It occurs to me, however, that I left out one of the most important aspects of this phenomenon occuring in popular culture – vampires. The most recent Twilight series (which I haven’t seen, I have to admit) is only the latest point in a long history that [...]
Modding Nature – Tails of the Extreme
“Modding”, for the noncognicenti (of which I count myself one), is making everyday objects into works of art that fit into some genre. Steampunk is where I’ve come across this at, in my opinion, its most inventive. As an example at random, here’s an X-Box unit cleverly modded to reflect a 19th Century steam-powered contraption, [...]
