Victorian stuff in jars!

March 15, 2011 8:01 AM

The Grant museum of zoology in London has been called "A restored Victorian treasure-house crammed with specimens from a bottle of preserved moles to extinct zebras and (just identified) the legs of a dodo. And all this was put together by the man that taught zoology to Charles Darwin"
The entire collection has been closed for almost a year as all 67,000 specimens were moved from a tiny (but charming) space to a new larger space.
The new Grant Museum and its reopening.
posted by vacapinta (9 comments total)

Looks brilliant. Who knew there were penis bones? But really rubbish hours — 1-5pm, Monday to Friday.

Reminds me a lot of the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, which is brilliant. And also open on weekends.
posted by londonmark at 9:41 AM on March 15, 2011

extinct zebras and (just identified) the legs of a dodo

CLONES. NOW.
posted by Faint of Butt at 9:46 AM on March 15, 2011

The old Grant Museum was clearly, clearly designed for a massive swashbuckling fight scene. Teetering fossils perched on cabinets that were just the right height to vault over. A zebra skeleton to duck behind. Jars of mixed starfish for throwing. Spiky fish. There was a narwhal horn over the door, for goodness' sake, just in the right place to grab after you've lost your sword and been forced to retreat and it looks like it's all over. A walrus penis bone to fend off the rhinoceros head that's being thrust towards you. Cluttered antlers sitting in piles on top of high cupboards.

To get there, you had to go past a mysterious generator with a sign reading "STRONG MAGNETIC FIELD KEEP OUT ENTRY FORBIDDEN". Plus there were whole shelves of unlabelled jars that were pretty much completely incomprehensible - I once asked a curator about a particularly pretty jar with some strange purple hairy things inside, and she disappeared and spent ten minutes poking around in books and consulting a colleague, before coming back with "I think it might be... ovaries? Of... an animal?".

I am pretty excited about the new Grant Museum! But it has a lot to live up to.

(London-based fans of Victorian stuff in jars should also be sure to go to the Natural History Museum's Darwin Centre, which as of a year or two ago is open to the public; there are lots of jars of specimens on display, and glass walls looking into darkened rooms with many, many more. And of course, elsewhere there's the two halves of Babbage's brain, with one hemisphere in the Science Museum and one in the Hunterian...)
posted by severalbees at 9:51 AM on March 15, 2011 [5 favorites]

a bottle of preserved moles

Mmmmh.... preserved Moles!

*heads over to AskMeFi for some delicious mole pickling recipes*
posted by Hairy Lobster at 9:55 AM on March 15, 2011

Please complete this sentence and make PH's day:

People looking for a similar museum in the US would be interested in ____________.
posted by paisley henosis at 12:06 PM on March 15, 2011

It's not zoological, but Philadelphia has a museum that meets the wunderkrammer of oddities criteria.
posted by Stagger Lee at 1:36 PM on March 15, 2011

So does LA:

Museum of Jurassic Technology

I love it and visit it regularly!
posted by Hairy Lobster at 2:23 PM on March 15, 2011

The Tring branch of the Natural History Museum (called The Rothschild Museum (I think) when I was little) is choc-a-bloc with amazing/creepy stuffed animals, skeletons, etc. There's definitely a dodo in there. I remember being creeped out by the giant spider crab and charmed by the lovely little dormouse on his stem of wheat. These sort of places evoked such wonder in little me, and I'm glad their spooky and macabre mission is carrying on.
posted by Magnakai at 8:01 PM on March 15, 2011

But really rubbish hours — 1-5pm, Monday to Friday.

The Grant is open tomorrow, it appears.
posted by vacapinta at 12:51 PM on March 18, 2011