Pigeons in the Prado

I've blogged before about my preference for museums that tell a clear story.  I just don't have the patience (or the creativity?) to form my own narrative from disconnected, poorly explained objects.  So I was really excited recently to visit two museums in Spain that, in their own very different ways, presented a fully formed idea with originality and panache.  This post is about the first of them: the Prado.

I know what you're thinking: unified vision? in an art gallery?! True, at their worst (let's face it, most of the time) they are just walls of paintings with little explanation - rooms full of canvasses only connected by the fact that the people who painted them came from the same country.  But from November to April the staid corridors of Spain's greatest gallery were subject to an invasion of curiosities.

If it hadn't been for the death of Charles III in 1788 and the subsequent Peninsular War, the Prado building would have housed the royal cabinet of natural history.  That was all the excuse Spanish artist Miguel Ángel Blanco needed to raid Madrid's natural history museum, which conserves what's left of the monarchy's collection of hunting trophies and other curiosities, and scatter 22 items in thought-provoking spots around the massive gallery.  Thus in a simple but startling way he recreated the royal Wunderkammer of the 18th century.

He clearly had a lot of fun doing it.  What would spice up Dürer's Adam and Eve? A serpent skeleton!  What would offset the witches in Goya's Great He-Goat? Two toads, a bat skeleton, a moose (really) hoof, and some brimstone!  And of course he couldn't raid the Spanish royals' hoard of stuffed animals without taking at least one bull - this imposing specimen graced Rubens' Rape of Europa.

But even these obvious juxtapositions, because so unusual in an art gallery, were thought-provoking.  It was perhaps a no-brainer to put a narwhal tusk alongside Varotari's Orpheus and the Animals, but it was still powerful in raising the historic cultural associations of unicorns and the natural material that was traded across the world in support of those myths.

And there were more subtle allusions too.  A glowing review in the Times Higher Education singled out the tiny albino sparrow perched high above the massive Las Meninas. Blanco imagines it outside the window looking in at the royal court - its placement so high up complemented the airy composition of the painting.

Blanco had written explanatory labels for each pairing, explaining why he had chosen the object to accompany the painting and what features of each he was trying to draw out.  These plaques were not intrusive - anyone wanting to construct their own narrative was free to do so - but they provided a starting point for visitors to think through the juxtapositions.

I loved how this exhibition made me look and look again at the paintings, forcing me to consider not only their subject matter but also their cultural connotations, both at the time they were produced and today.  How many still lifes full of meat have we admired, without thinking of the animals that died to fill the larders of the seventeenth century?  Blanco chose a squab to accompany a painting by Juan Sánchez Cotán; his bodegón has been thought austere, but it was opulent compared with the spare skeleton of the pigeon chick alongside it.  What are we to make of the fact that the hanging pheasants are somehow more beautiful in two-dimensional death than the vestiges of the chick that never reached full maturity?

So Blanco still left plenty of questions unanswered.  But by taking a clear premise - putting the natural historical collections of the royal family back alongside their more familiar art collections - he told a simple story very well, making me think much more deeply about the Prado's artworks and their significance.

What about the second museum, I hear you ask!  Come back soon to hear all about a tiny treasure in Burgos!

An evolving gem of Paris

The last couple of times I wrote about museums on this blog (here and here), I was at least somewhat critical.  So I'm pleased to report a really positive museum visit.

The Jardin des Plantes is one of the more popular visitor attractions in Paris, especially on a lovely spring day (like last Sunday, when I was there).  It's been a centre for the study of botany since the 17th century, but it was under the stewardship of the Comte de Buffon (from 1739 until his death in 1788) that it grew into the archetypal complex of Enlightenment science.

Plan of the Jardin des Plantes,
from Baedeker's 1910 guide to Paris

As the pictures on the left show, it's changed little since his time.  Alongside the botanic garden are museums of botany, geology, palaeontology, and of the history of the site, and a growing zoo.  And the Grande Galerie de l'Évolution.

Map board from the Jardin des Plantes

Although the name suggests a museum solely about evolution, it has a much broader scope, closer to London's Natural History Museum.  (Confusingly for someone used to the NHM, the French Muséum national d'histoire naturelle refers to a whole collection of places, including the entire Jardin des Plantes site and all the museums mentioned above, as well as several other museums, gardens and zoos within and without Paris.)

The Grande Galerie was inaugurated in July 1889, just a few weeks after the Eiffel Tower, during the Exposition Universelle.  Originally called the Museum of Zoology, it was designed to provide a more spacious setting for the old Cabinet of Natural History, which itself had replaced the old royal Cabinet of Curiosities after the Revolution, and which occupied the small building now dedicated to the history of the Jardin.  The new building was a strong statement of commitment to the advancing science of zoology, and remains a hugely impressive space today: a gigantic open hall overlooked by three levels of arcaded balconies.

The Grande Galerie (re)opened with its current name in 1994, after a major refurbishment following decades of neglect and closure.  And it is well worth a visit.


It makes great use of that gallery space with a parade of taxidermied animals, as if filing off Noah's ark (though in many cases there are more than two gorgeous examples of a species).  This is surrounded by skeletons of whales, astounding arrays of butterflies, creepy specimens in blue glass jars... You name it.

Animation with some recognisable figures.

But what I like about this museum is that it draws you in with the big spectacle - the amazing richness and diversity of the natural world - and then when it's got your attention, it has the time and space to present many different approaches to the study of that incredible subject matter.

So there's a section dedicated to the history of zoology (slightly tucked away at the top of the building, but never mind) with explanations of the development of scientific theories alongside specimens associated with important figures like Lamarck, Cuvier and Darwin.

Some tools of the taxidermist's trade

There's a case dedicated to explaining taxidermy.  And there are changing displays for children - when we were there, one focused on the biology, history, mythology and conservation of the narwhal.

Zoologists might find something to criticise here: there's little scientific explanation of how animals come to be the way they are, and not too much about the relationships between them (genetic or in terms of diet/habitat).  And if you want fossils, you'll have to go across the Jardin to the Galeries d’Anatomie comparée et de Paléontologie.  In fact, now that I think about it, Grande Galerie de l'Évolution is rather a silly name for what is an old-fashioned museum of zoology.  But for that old-fashioned zoological spectacle, which nonetheless leads you off in various thoughtful and occasionally unexpected directions, I strongly recommend it.

Penguins Might Fly

• Can an object be artistic and scientific at the same time?  
• Can art have a place in science museums?  
• Why do museum object labels matter?

These questions are the subject of this post, which was prompted by a visit I made recently to the Bell Pettigrew Museum at the University of St Andrews, in Scotland.

The Bell Pettigrew is the University's zoology museum: "a rare survival of a Victorian teaching museum, and wonderfully atmospheric", according to their website.  It's a small, attractively laid-out place, well worth an hour or so of your time.  But I was surprised to find, among the usual bones, some paintings.  This is the first one I saw, in the case dedicated to flightless birds:

The collage-painting depicts a moa, an animal that has been extinct for more than five hundred years.  Here's what the label underneath says:

Male moa (Dinornis giganteus) in breeding plumage (left) guarding its harem of foraging females in the dense subtropical forests of the Oparara Valley
Paul Bartlett

Now, I have no idea how much is known about the breeding plumage, foraging habits or mating practices of this animal, which was wiped out over 300 years before the arrival of European settlers in New Zealand.*  What I am interested in is the authority of the museum label underneath the artist's impression.

In the nearby Penguin case, there's another picture by the same artist.  You shouldn't have any trouble reading the label this time:

The penguins look rather like they're flying (perhaps they're imagining that they are).  But despite the clear impressionism (small-I and big-I) of this painting, I didn't feel the same discomfort as when I saw the moas.  Why not?  It must have been the label.  The first label, with its impressive Latin binomial nomenclature and technical-sounding words like "breeding plumage" and "foraging females", adopts the authoritative tone of a museum curator.  The second is an incomplete sentence: not at all surprising for the title of a work of art, but obviously not sufficient as the label for a museum object.

The obvious questions are: Who is the artist?  What is his level of expertise?  Fortunately the Penguin case also included a brief biography.  Paul Bartlett studied for a PhD in animal behaviour at St Andrews, before becoming a full-time artist.  According to the biography, "he continually strives to find innovative techniques and styles in which to depict his subjects whilst retaining an element of authenticity."

I found this reassuring and, at the same time, worrying.  The artist whose work is displayed in this museum of zoology clearly has both the expertise and the desire to create authentic depictions of animals in their natural habitat, something that may potentially augment the enjoyment and learning opportunities of museum visitors.  But what does "an element of authenticity" mean?

There's also an obvious difference between painting animals that can be seen in countless videos and photographs, and those that are extinct.  For the latter, artistic licence must surely be tempered by a sense of responsibility.  I was reminded of the paintings of Édouard Riou, the young Frenchman who illustrated Louis Figuier's La Terre avant le déluge (1863).  For this monumental work of popular natural history, Figuier commissioned Riou to produce some attractive engravings.  Riou responded with some hugely vivid but also hugely imaginative works of art, like this one.    

Iguanadon and Megalosaur enjoy mutual chomping

La Terre avant le déluge was an instant bestseller, shifting 25,000 copies in the first two years.  Riou went on to work as an illustrator for Jules Verne.  And his illustrations had a huge effect on the way dinosaurs were - and are - imagined (don't forget, no human ever saw a living dinosaur, but we like to think we have a pretty good idea about how they might have behaved).

In the Bell Pettigrew, it's fairly clear that the moa pictured are extinct (though it might have been helpful to include that on the label).  And we can probably be sure that, despite what appears in the collage, its breeding plumage didn't incorporate printed text.  But it does make you wonder about the authority of museum labels.

I'm not arguing that we should go back to having unlabelled, uninterpreted, unconnected skeletons lined up in cases.  But I'm not sure there's a place for artistic licence in zoology museums either.

*I will note that, according to the ever-reliable Wikipedia, only "two species of Dinornis are considered valid, D. novaezealandiae of the North Island, and D. robustus of the South."  Another website, the excitingly-named carnivoraforum.com, states that D. giganteus and D. robustus are the same thing - two birds that were long considered separate species have recently been identified as males and females of the same species.  But according to nzbirds.com, "Dinornis giganteus lived in the North Island of New Zealand and D. robustis in the South Island ... The species Dinornis giganteus and Dinornis struthoides are now placed in the synonymy of Dinornis novaezealandiae."

Terror and Trabants in Berlin

What makes a memorable museum experience?  As I've worked and researched in museums this year, I've thought a lot about that.  And I thought about it again this week while visiting two very different museums in Berlin.

First, a confession: I'm not a good museum-goer.  My attention span is limited, I like variety, and even if I read information panels diligently, I don't always absorb the information they contain.  But you know something?  I'm not the only one!  Studies of museum visitors show they pass over most interpretive labels without reading them, and rarely follow the paths exhibition designers have mapped out for them.  When was the last time you went through a museum from beginning to end, giving every object and its label your full attention?

While in Berlin at the weekend I visited two museums that addressed different bits of Germany's recent history: The Topography of Terror and The DDR Museum.  The former, located on the site of the Gestapo headquarters, focuses on many aspects of the Nazi regime from 1933 to 1945.  The latter tells the story of life in Communist East Germany from 1945 to 1990.  They each have a difficult story to tell, and do so in radically different ways.

"A Ribbon of Panels"

Permanent exhibition, Topography of Terror

In many ways the Topography of Terror takes a traditional approach.  It is laid out broadly chronologically, with descriptive, illustrated information panels hanging from the ceiling.  Where possible it uses primary sources, and some individual human stories, to draw the visitor into the story it is telling.  There are many scanned documents and photographs on display.

But there's something missing.  This is a museum - where are the objects?  Almost everything in the permanent exhibition - apart from a few audio and video recordings - would have been just the same in a well-illustrated book, such as the one on sale at the museum.

I have taught this topic to various ages of school students, and there was little new for a visitor like me: no attempt to tell a familiar story in striking or thought-provoking ways.  But for someone less familiar with Nazism there was the potential for confusion, as the chronology was unexpectedly broken in places by the Museum's separate presentation of the various institutions of Nazi state terror.  So individual events like Kristallnacht were mentioned or partially explained in two or three separate places, as the roles of overlapping institutions like the SS, SD and various police forces were described.

"A Hands-on Experience of History"

Articles from the Communist coming-of-age ceremony

The DDR Museum was completely different.  Billing itself as "Berlin's interactive museum", it openly aims to draw visitors into the experience of life in the old Communist Bloc.  So as well as reading about it, you can sit in an old cotton-plastic Trabant car, watch propaganda films, try your hand at the decision-making process involved in running a factory, and feel the difference between the Party-approved but poorly-dyed Boxer jeans and the highly subversive Levi's.  There's also a restaurant serving authentic cuisine from behind the Iron Curtain.

Stylish products of a socialist utopia

Now, it goes without saying that it's harder to present a museum about the Nazis in an interactive way.  And the DDR Museum could be accused of making life under Communism seem more bearable, even fun, than it really was.  But with its varied, multisensory approach, it certainly made the learning process more interactive.  And it was more thought-provoking as a result.  Even cheap tricks like hiding information in drawers or cupboards that you have to open, like the clothing catalogue shown here, make you look more closely at them.

words + (horrific) pictures -- is there another way?

Did the Topography of Terror eschew such imaginative presentation because it is dealing with a serious subject that needs to be presented in a straightforward manner?  The first point to make is that their simple, words + pictures presentation is not inherently more objective - the information has been selected and the descriptions written by the museum curators to present a particular picture.  You could even say that it's dishonest to hide this subjective selection process from museum visitors.

I'm tempted to suggest that the weight of the subject matter allowed the curators of the Topography of Terror to be rather lazy in their exhibition design.  It's as if they thought: this is important - people should have to work to learn about it.

But that's not why I go to museums.  I don't always expect to have fun - certainly not in a museum called "The Topography of Terror", but I do expect some originality and freshness of presentation.  I want to have an experience, to feel something.  If you want to find out about Nazi terror, read Richard J. Evans' three-part general history, Robert Gellately's groundbreaking work on the Gestapo, or Victor Klemperer's moving diaries of life as a Jew in Dresden.  Best of all, watch the BBC documentary The Nazis: A Warning From History - you will certainly feel plenty as you are gripped by its chilling interviews with victims, witnesses and perpetrators of Nazi atrocities.

Tasteful decor... reliable news... those were the days.

On the other hand, if you want to experience a glimpse of life in the old GDR, I strongly recommend the DDR Museum.  I can't speak for the quality or authenticity of the Jägerschnitzel in their restaurant, but it is an excellent learning experience.

What do you think?  What kind of presentation styles do you like in museums?  How long is your ideal museum visit?  Feel free to comment!