Beasts of the Long-Gone Wilds

When I was little and visited my Dad every other weekend we used to visit a museum almost every Saturday I was there. When I visited a few weeks ago and we happened to have the time we revived this tradition, with a visit to one of the two largest Natural History museums in Germany: Senckenberg Naturmuseum.

Architectural drawing of the new Museum by F. von Hoven and L.Neher, 1908 (via)

Senckenberg is huge, and we didn’t even make it through the whole exhibition – we eventually got hungry and left before I could drag my father to the botanical parts.

Some of the subterranean parts of the museum haven’t changed since I’ve been there for the first time as a child but the giant fossils and skeletons haven’t lost any of their fascination. The dinosaur exhibition has been updated, though, and now features spots specifically marked for social media pictures. Also, psittacosaurs are the cutest thing that was alive about 120 million years ago. I want one for a pet (they’re not even large!).

I love how they’ve displayed this whale’s ribcage – no wonder people had the idea of folks travelling in there. Right next to it there’s a wet specimen of a whale’s heart, about as big as my torso, only wider. How curious and awesome is it that something so comparatively small is able to keep something so large alive?

No matter how often I see it, the mummy exhibition will always be something special to me. Not only because ancient artifacts hold such fascination for me but also because I wasn’t allowed in when I was little. I don’t even know why anymore – was it my Dad who didn’t think it appropriate to have a child look at bodies of children, no matter how long they had been mummies? Did they have an age restriction back then? I remember a warning for pregnant women with the embryonic specimen (that I didn’t see anywhere this time but I clearly see them before me next to the stairs in my memory) so maybe they had one for the mummies, too? Anyway, getting into the dark cube that holds these exhibits will always be associated with the feeling of adventure.

It’s more about the painted ornaments on the sarcophagus and the reconstruction drawings of flower garlands around the wrapping nowadays, though.

Senckenberg boasts a bird exhibition with over 1000 specimen. Some are as old as the museum itself, so over a century. One of my favourite games to play in there is to imagine them all coming to life and to try and make up the sheer amount of noise all these birds would make together (and the ensuing chaos).

The taxidermy exhibitions are presented fairly traditionally, but I admit that I really like – how macabre it may be – to wander through rows and rows of cabinets full of dead, glass-eyed animals.

The mineral collection is fittingly kept underground, under the sea fossils and empty crab shells. There is a whole wall of perfectly lit crystals in black shadow boxes, and they photograph so well. Ugh, that garnet. So pretty.

I love natural history museums. I could spend hours just studying the features of animals I’ll never see alive. Marvel at the size of a lion’s paw. Admire the toll age and sunlight took on a panda specimen, how the black markings around its eyes have been bleached.

I absolutely regret not bringing my sketchbook, although I wouldn’t have had time to do much, anyway. I’ll have to do that another time, then, maybe in Hanover, though, because I have a huge museum at hand here, too.

Do you like natural history museums? Or do they creep you out? I’d love to read about it in the comments, and while you’re at it, do you have a favourite museum where you live?

Landesmuseum Hannover: Manmade

I must admit that I was terribly hard to narrow it down to just about 20 pictures for this. I’m an archaeologist so of course I’m smitten with old artifacts whenever I see them but I tried to just pick out the highlights for you.

The setup of the archaeological exhibition alone was lovely, with back-lit watercolour illustration.

I just love looking at various materials marked by time. Finding wooden artifacts like those above is one of the most exciting thing for an archaeologist, by the way, because it makes dating the thing so much easier (and also it’s beautiful).

Oh Bronze Age. Your designs never cease to amaze me. Isn’t this bowl beautiful?

I’m always pretty smitten with these kind of ornaments and the flow in the overall shape of the pieces themselves.

I’d absolutely have these in my tea mug collection. I’m always sad when museum shops only carry the usual stuff like postcards, catalogues and the stuff every museum shop has but no interesting replicas or other non-paper things connected to the actual exhibitions.

This was the only decent picture I was able to take of pieces of the Roman exhibition, sadly. My main field of interest being Roman invaders’ contact with other cultures I think that’s a pity.

This gamelan set is being played regularly for concerts. The museum also has a Japanese tea-house that is used for tea ceremony demonstrations. I still have to go to one of these!

I was really in love with the overall exhibition of Pacific arts and crafts. And the ships remind me of Moana, of course.

One was supposed to go through the local pre- and early historic exhibition first, I think, but I completely trailed off and took a detour through the ethnological collection… Anyway, the Medieval collection that I finally came back to was really lovely as well.

I’m a bit sorry this one got so very archaeology-heavy but I want to go back anyway and hopefully I can bring back some more pictures of the ethnological collection then, too!

Click here for Part 1: Nature.

Landesmuseum Hannover: Nature

When my father visited we went for a stroll though the city. When we passed an impressively large old building we went to investigate what it was and found it to be the Lower Saxony State Museum.Going to museums has always been “our” thing. When I was younger and visited him every fortnight we went to a museum every Sunday morning. And continuing this tradition we decided to go in.I’m splitting the picture for this museum into several parts (as I did before when I wrote about the Hessian State Museum in Darmstadt), Nature, man-made things and fine art, as this is one of those museums you’ll spend half a day in and still haven’t seen everything up close.We started with the depths of the sea, flooded with bluish lighting. Not only do they display skulls of sea mammals and fish there, no, they also have a vivarium that makes you feel like you’re in something part zoo, part museum. I don’t think I’ll have to mention that this is a great hit with the younger visitors (and me as well).I found myself taken with the beautiful aquariums even a bit more for the lush green flora and miniature landscapes (or rather, underwaterscapes) than for their scaly inhabitants.Right next to the piranha aquarium was a skull of one of their ancestors in a ghostly light, reminding us that those pouty lips hide absurdly sharp teeth and the pleasant chill down a childs spine when they wade into a lake thinking of those monsters (in central Europe where there are no piranhas, but did I care when I was eight? No, I did not).I really liked this display. It felt a bit like a bottled-up holiday by the seaside.To give you a bit of the scale of this quartz rock, here’s the bigger picture. It was lit from the bottom, emanating a magical glow that made it strangely special in this huge collection of things in a now brightly lit showroom.
I also love the transition from the Under The Sea exhibition to (more or less because Lower Saxony has quite a bit of moorland) dry land.

The nature exhibition, located in the parterre of the building, ended with something that looked like a giant, glass-walled birdcage with all kinds of specimen captured and stuffed in flight or rest. I’m always so very fascinated by shimmering feathers.I wish they had quartz crystals in the souvenirs shop, I would surely have gotten one.

Somewhat Weekly Vlog: Year 2017, Week 15

… in which I talk about #squadqoals and tag problems.
The painting shown is “The Dance of the Horae” by Erasmus Quellinus the Younger (at Landesmuseum Hannover).

Field Trip: Historisches Museum Frankfurt

In the context of our class on museum concepts we visited Frankfurt in late December. Having spent not a small amount of time of my childhood and teenage years in the city I already knew several of the many museums there, but the Historical Museum was none of them. We also visited the Archaeological Museum (being a class of archaeologists and everything, pictured above) and the Caricatura, but both had a ban on photographs, flash or no flash, so sadly no pictures of really great Roman and early Medieval finds (set up in an old monastery, no less!). I apologise.

Anyway, the Historical Museum is mainly centered around Collectors and Donors of Frankfurt, their main exhibition. We sadly had to skip the toll tower so I surely have a reason to come back and take a less rushed look sometime soon (three museums in seven hours are a lot too much. Believe me.). Their current special exhibition was on ‘Arsenic and New Medicine’, 19th century pharmacy, accompanied by some early 20th century examples, too.

I must say that, while the building is charming, the fact that you have to go down to the cellars first to actually start your tour is a little bit confusing, especially because you’ll land in an un-decorated vault first, something a friend titled “an exhibition of waste of space” which wasn’t completely off. The waiting area is nice-ish, though.

Off to the more interesting part of the cellars!

The museum is built on site and uses parts of the old Staufish court, and the vaulted cellars are part of that.

There’s a model of the court including the toll tower with small zograscopes at several point which show scenes from the daily life during the 12th and 13th century.

The model can even be opened like a doll house (not just this apse, the roof, too)!

See the square in the “ground”? It was some sort of secret (or not so secret, we’re not sure) entrance to a vault beneath the court chapel:

These are not the original regalia of Charlemagne, sadly, but mere replicas. At some point however there were riches and treasures stored down there, and it probably worked as a medieval panic room, too.

Leaving the old sewer system and the vault behind the several upper floors are something completely different. Also the staircase is nice.

The whole exhibition on collectors from Frankfurt is very nicely done. The example above are pinned butterflies and moths and a very neat pair of old field guides divided from the rest of the room by canvas hangings printed with the illustrations from the exhibited books.

I wish I had more halfway decent pictures of the weaponry. The rapier above was the one I’d chosen from the array, and I thought the intarsia on an old musket were really pretty, too.

I have a thing for old-fashioned packaging design, so the special exhibition was quite up my alley. I really enjoyed the subtle differences in the pinks of the Pyramidon packaging.

There’s so much I still wanted to show you but with hurrying through there was too little time to take pictures of everything. I’ll have to put you off until my next visit there, but until then I promise you at least one last museum from my field trips.

I’m rather sorry about the low quality of the pictures, especially once I got out of the cellars. My camera’s battery was low (memo to self: always check the night before) and I shot in a hurry without regards to lighting or stability. Anyway, another reason to return!

Anyone in the area in for tea at IIMORI’s and a museum visit (preferably dolled up)?

HLMD: Animals and Archaeology

Here we go, the promised second post about the HLMD, this time about the natural history and archaeology collections. If you are sensitive towards taxidermy this might not be the post for you. Just saying. I left out the dissected pigeons, though.

They put the Bad Vilbel Oceanus mosaic right next to the entrance under a glass roof mocking an atrium, a well-made presentation for the biggest Roman mosaic we have in Hesse.

I think she looks a bit like a Tove Jansson character, to be honest.

The non-antiquity archaeological exhibition of the HLMD is located right next to the Art Nouveau den on the subterranean level of the museum in the old workshops. This means that they don’t have much space to showcase their exhibits but they did the best job they could with what they were given.

I might have a thing for early medieval damascened belt buckles. Or damascened things in general.

See that hatchet on the top? That’s my favourite form, Lanquaid II.

On the other side of the corridor there are two courtyards, this is the Gothic one. All the fern and the high walls make it a place perfect for fairytale or myth readings.

Enough with the remains of generations past, onwards to zoology.

The Darmstadt Dioramas are special as they are part of the original concept of the HLMD, all the way back from 1906 (the taxidermy is even older!). They were luckily not destroyed during WWII, but restored with a little help from old photographs and are now again part of the show.

They call it the skeleton herd. I call it the skeleton army.

The main focus of this department is biodiversity, and how preparation works.

Some of the exhibited tools and of course taxidermy is from the 18th century when the museum was founded as the personal Wunderkammer collection of the local prince.
They also have two of the most fabulous pigeons ever.

The museum is so large that they have guided tours themed for each bigger department. Zoology alone can keep you busy for two hours or so.

Aaand we’re done. Good riddance, HLMD, at least for another year! Don’t get me wrong, it’s a wonderful museum, just not when you visit it twice in one week and both times heavily pressed for time and your professor messes up the timing for your presentation (I’ve been the tiniest bit stressed out lately).

Anyway, this is a great example for a museum that came from a noble’s collection, stuffed with interesting things and able to keep you busy for a whole day. Again, they have a website, and now you won’t have to read another post on museums until the middle of December. ^^