London's Urban Jungle - A Blog

Check out the blog I wrote to promote London's Urban Jungle, on now at the Horniman Museum and Gardens - http://horniman.ac.uk/get_involved/blog/londons-urban-jungle

More to come in the next few weeks so watch this space!

Thank you to those who have been already/tweeted/given feedback it really means a lot! 

London’s Urban Jungle @ The Horniman Museum & Gardens

I am so pleased to be able to say that this past weekend London’s Urban Jungle, an exhibition I’ve curated together with the Horniman Museum & Gardens, opened.

The idea for the project began two years ago and was closely tied up with the work I did for my MA, and one thing led to another and here we are - it’s now open for you all to go and see.

My hope is that it will introduce people to a side of history we don’t often think about – the history of the exotic animal trade – where it began, who was involved and what impact it had on Victorian society. It will also, I hope, bring Charles Jamrach to a new audience. He’s a fascinating character in London’s history and there are some interesting stories to be told about his business, some of which feature in the exhibition.

It’s on until the 21^st February 2016 so please go if you can – here’s a link to the exhibits webpage and do keep an eye on it as we’re hoping to add a few bits and pieces over the coming weeks.

http://www.horniman.ac.uk/visit/current-exhibitions

And please tweet – it would be great to hear what you think about it! What questions has it prompted? What stories have you heard? It would be great to get a conversation going if we can.

I hope you find it as interesting to view as I did researching it! The Horniman Museum is a great place to spend an afternoon!

Crowd-Funding an Exhibition – Please show your support

‘We only have 2 weeks left to raise the money to stage Mark Fairnington’s exhibition at the Horniman Museum and every pound counts. To find out more, make a donation and get wonderful rewards visit http://www.artfund.org/get-involved/art-happens/mark-fairnington-the-hornimans-hidden-world’

This week I received the above email asking me to help support the crowdfunding efforts of the Horniman Museum to stage the exhibition Mark Fairnington: The Horniman’s hidden world and rather than just tweet or flag it on Facebook I thought I’d quickly mention it here.

The idea of the exhibition is to stage Mark Fairnington’s paintings alongside their inspiration, the Horniman’s hidden taxidermy treasures. The objects will be presented as they are in storage, the aim being to ‘evok[e] the wonder Mark experienced when he found them for the first time’.

Now, I’ve never heard of museums or galleries crowdfunding before, but a quick scan of www.artfund.org show’s me to be rather naïve in that view. So I guess it’s just never appeared on my radar before – but what a fantastic idea! We all know of the growing pressures museum face, especially with regards to funding cuts and this to me just seems like an imaginative way to get an exhibition up and running.  It’s placing emphasis on public engagement and asking the public to get involved and support institutions and culture they value.

I donated – why? Because of my interest in natural history, taxidermy and fondness for the Museum, but also because of my curiosity about how Mark has taken something so ‘of its time’ and made it relevant. I’m really interested to see how the specimens will be represented in his modern art and how he has used the collection. It will bring modern art and natural history together and show that natural history collections are relevant and continue to provide inspiration, outside of a scientific context (my thoughts not the museum’s!!!). It will also enable the museum to show a more extensive selection of its holdings, that it could not otherwise display, which again can only be a good thing, for us curious members of the public!

Anyway, I didn’t intend to review the museums fundraising technique, I just wanted to say what a fantastic idea I think it is and hope that maybe some of you who read this, might also feel as impassioned about this idea and offer a donation to help it become a reality.

Follow the link if you do - http://www.artfund.org/get-involved/art-happens/mark-fairnington-the-hornimans-hidden-world

Thanks!