Curating a Cabinet at the Natural History Museum

On Tuesday 18th November, Year Eight Museum Council students set off to the Natural History Museum to start an exciting new project with the Museum of Climate Hope and the Natural History Museum itself.

The visit began with a fascinating introduction to the aims and ideas behind the Museum of Climate Hope by its creators Bill Finnegan and Anya Gleizer. They explained how the students would be choosing objects from the Natural History Museum to appear in a new cabinet, and how each item would connect to one of three core themes: innovation/adaptation, resilience, and transformation. 

Sarah Lloyd from the Natural History Museum then showed some items which she would pick out to convey the theme: these included a desert beetle which stands on its head and has a spiky abdomen, allowing moisture from the air to pool and then run into its mouth, and a fossil of an ancestor to the horse, which adapted from rainforest life to living in open plains. 

The students then set off to explore the museum's collections, and to start to think about what items they might choose. Ideas from sharks to bacteria emerged in a discussion afterwards. In the coming weeks, Bill and Anya will visit Cheney to run workshops to continue the project, which will ultimately culminate in a new cabinet at the museum designed by Year Eight Museum Council students!