Booth Museum of Natural History

Along with the Svankmajer exhibition, on the 18th November, i visited the Booth Museum of Natural History in Brighton. The Booth museum is the personal collection of taxidermy collected by Edward Booth in the late 1800's. On his death, as he had no heirs, Booth gave his collection (the museum) to the peoples of Brighton and Hove. His collection includes that of birds, butterflies, fossils and skeletons, the museum even has a nearly complete skeleton of the extinct prehistoric dodo bird.What i loved about this museum, even if it did seem a tad cruel, was the fact that i could see the real minute details of the birds and butterflies that are near impossible to see in everyday. Booths collection of butterflies was especially great, filling close to three whole rooms. Before visiting the museum i did not think it possible for there to even be that many types of butterflies, and their beauty was so incredible! it really made me marvel at how beautifully fascinating and amazing the creation of life really is.

There was also one other thing that impressed me ever so. This was the museums collection of aninmal skeletons, ranging from something as seemingly insignificant as a newt to the skull of a rhino and the bones of a killer whale. This part of the museum really really impressed me! to see the size of such animals in the flesh. But as amazing as it was this also brought me sadness. For as i viewed the skeletons they were shown alongside information cards, cards reading details such as whetehr the animals were common, rare or maybe even indangered or extict. And the reason this sadened me was that i saw so many animals were told to be endangered or extinct. On viewing the primates my girlfriend said something that struck a cord with me and still does to this day. She mentioned to me at how similar the bones of the chimpanzee and the orungutan were to the human skeleton, which was shown besides. I then got thinking as to how close we are tthe primates and how we too were one of the main blames when it came to their endangerment. On this note i then came to try and persue this argum,ent within my art, arguing on the behalf of those without voices.