ABSTRACT
The Natural History Museum in London (hereafter the NHM) curates and displays one of the most comprehensive and world-famous collections of specimens of once-living forms. Many people who walk into the museum are lured in, enchanted but also bewildered by life’s variety. Some perhaps tune into a sense of reverence towards several millennia of life on the planet, only some of it coincident with human existence. Many natural history aficionados herald such museums as examples of precious ‘secular cathedrals’ of our time (NHM 2003). Fragile butterflies and moths carefully pinned and aligned in mahogany cabinets compete for space and attention with glass dioramic cases of perching birds and numerous other displays. The more conventional historical collections of dried, pressed, pinned and stuffed organisms spanning all five of nature’s kingdoms today compete with the new Darwin Centre’s spirit collection. This houses what, for some people, is perhaps the most exotic specimen of all – a giant squid, once holding a place in the human imagination as a mythical being – suspended in formol-saline within an acrylic tank, nine metres long. Contributing to the sensation conjured by the ghostly and fleshy presence of the squid is the fact that the tank was built by the same company furnishing the artist Damien Hirst with containers for his exhibits. Embodied memories and traces of lost and still-living species are ordered, preserved and classified in every corner of the vast museum. These stand for at least part of the planet’s biodiversity, some of which continues to flourish in living form beyond the walls of the museum.
