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Grant Museum of Zoology

Grant Museum of Zoology, Rockefeller Building, University College London, University St, London, WC1E 6DE Full details & map

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© UCL Grant Museum / Matt Clayton

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Posted: Fri Mar 25 2011

The Grant Museum may have moved very recently into new premises - a grand room in a former library in the UCL complex - but it looks as if this zoological museum, the only one of its kind in London, has been here for a century or more. Such is the transporting effect of seeing avenues of display cases stuffed to the gunnels with animal skeletons, taxidermy specimens and creatures preserved in fluid, like a true Victorian wunderkammer. Nods to current trends in museum display - iPads attached to displays invite you to ponder questions about the role of science today - are discreet; the museum doesn't need to distract or over-explain when its exhibits are among the most engrossing (and very occasionally gross-out) in London.

From a jar of tiny moles to a huge elephant skull that helps to explain the Cyclops myth (its large central cavity could well be a monocular eye socket), there is plenty here to draw gasps of amazement. Grimly fascinating is the museum's collection of bisected heads, created by Sir Victor Negus, which appear quite normal on one side but can be turned to reveal the brain within. They immediately bring to mind the work of Damien Hirst, and the overlaps between science, nature, art and design don't stop there - a skeleton of an anaconda twists round a branch like a zen modernist sculpture, sections of shark vertebrae look as if they could be maquettes for Constantin Brancusi's 'Endless Column'. Created in the mid-1800s, Leopold and Rudolph Blashka's glass models of jellyfish, sea anemones, gastropods, sea cucumbers and cephalopods are exquisite art works in their own right.

There's evidence that the curators have had fun with the displays - a trio of Hawksbill turtles are arranged on a wall in the manner of ceramic flying ducks. However, the serious work of the museum, not only as a reliquary for long lost species (a drawer of dodo bones turned up during the museum's move) but as a site of ongoing research, shines through - in fact the former library's pigeon holes are used by UCL zoology staff and students to present a visual (and visceral) A to Z of current projects.

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Grant Museum of Zoology, Rockefeller Building, University College London, University St, London WC1E 6DE

Grant Museum of Zoology

Recently re-opened at a new address - an Edwardian former library in the UCL complex - the Grant Museum of animal skeletons, taxidermy specimens...

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Transport Euston/Goodge Street 

Telephone

020 3108 2052

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums/zoology

1-5pm Mon-Fri, closed bank hols and Christmas/Easter period

Grant Museum of Zoology map

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Comments & ratings 3/5 (Average of 2 ratings)

By Kristen - Mar 3 2012

Could I get an idea of prices?

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By Rebecca - Feb 8 2012
5/5

It's a bit hard to find as its moved, but the posters outside the old site haven't been taken down but once you get into the amazing little room it's great; a mix between all the animals in pickled jars at the natural history museum, and old victorian museums full of taxidermied animals... I really recommend this for a fun morning or afternoon out, it isn't huge but the cases certainly are packed with all sorts of weird and wonderful animals. Best of all you can adopt a specimen for a year!

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