Tag: art

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‘Rock music’: a new take on the NHM Building Stone Collection |Curator of Petrology

The Natural History Museum Building Stone collection contains over 17,000 specimens and is one of the largest documented collections of its kind in the UK. It is particularly useful for matching stone in historical buildings during conservation work, but not only for that!

Often this collection causes an unconscious burst of inventiveness, and it features amazing pieces of art like this black stone from Derbyshire or this spectacular limestone. This time around it has inspired artist Charles Richard to collect the ‘sonic’ languages extracted from geological materials, a continuation of his master project at the Royal College of Art with a mission to create a series of digital box sets.

Continue reading to learn more about the building stone collection and Charles’ project.

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A kaleidoscope of beautiful birdwings

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We have completed digitising the Museum’s birdwing butterfly collection. Images of more than 8000 specimens have been released onto the Museum’s data portal for anyone in the world to access. This digitisation project has enabled us to gather accurate information about what we have within our collection and this new online resource will support conservation plans to protect endangered species for the future.

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Celebrating two years of the NHM Art-Science Interest Group

The Museum’s Art-Science interest group (ASIG) is a forum for interesting talks and provocations, aimed at exploring interactions between science and the arts. It meets every few months.

We had our eighth meeting on Thursday 15th November 2018. It was our two year anniversary, so we were celebrating with wine, interesting talks and a growing number of ASIG participants. There were participants from the NHM, art galleries, including our neighbours the Serpentine, other museums, and universities.

We were treated to talks by three great speakers:

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CARAS visits the NHM | London Partnerships Manager

Hanouf El-Awari leading an Investigate session with visitors from the CARAS group

On 14 August 2018, the Natural History Museum welcomed a group from CARAS into the Museum for a special visit. CARAS is a community outreach charity based in Tooting, Wandsworth, who work with people of all ages from a refugee and asylum-seeking background, who live in South-West London.

CARAS had visited the NHM last year, doing a selfie trail. The group of thirty included young children and older adults, some of who were visiting the museum for the first time. The visit on 14 August included a short tour, an Investigate session, and a craft activity.

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Contemporary art at the Natural History Museum

There is a long tradition of art bringing dead things in museums to life.  The Natural History Museum is full of specimens that give us windows into life in all its glory.  But many artists give our collections and our ways of working new and unexpected lives.  The Museum’s Art-Science Interest Group (ASIG) brings together the museum staff and artists (and in some cases these inhabit the same bodies) to explore the collections, and life, the universe and everything, through an artistic lens.

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