Awkward albatross
(Display in the music room of Horniman Free Museum: London, UK)
Famed for its collection of musical instruments in particular, the Horniman museum in London is literally bursting at the seams with artifacts, both musical and otherwise. It is very rare in the UK now that a museum hasn’t been done over and over done. By this I mean that by restoring and ‘improving’ their services, there is often significantly less on show and less personal interpretation of the exhibitions. I wanted to demonstrate how full this place really is by drawing your attention to this display. It is an assault on the eyes and there is so much to take in that the viewer feels immediately overwhelmed. I think that is how I like to feel in museums as the world is such an immense and fascinating place and museums are a condensed showcase of it – they should feel like a microcosm of the world, containing a little of everything and then a bit more.
I was allowed to visit the storage facility for this museum (here) and I was told, quite tragically, that once a musical instrument is collected or donated to the museum, it is never played again. The one small mercy is that before it is displayed or consigned to storage, an expert musician in that instrument is invited to play it for the last time and the sound is recorded so that audio traces are left of it before it is encased in acid free foam and tyvek. It was an odd experience, to be close to The O2 (formerly the Millenium Dome) in an old schoolhouse filled with all manner of worldly ephemera that is almost constantly hidden from the public eye. I felt very privileged to see even a glimpse of it and be parley to the enthusiasm of the small team that build their careers around it.
There was one particular anecdote that I recall vividly; one member of staff had to take a stuffed albatross across London to an event or conference dealing with the extinction of seabirds. If you are not familiar with albatrosses, they are a positively enormous bird with a wingspan that never ceases to surprise me. This particular taxidermied creature had been positioned with wins outstretched, which made it difficult to maneuvre. It had been apparent to the lady when she attempted to negotiate the boot of her car that the animal was far too broad for easy transit. It sounded almost as if she had a beak in her ear all the way across the city. When she arrived at her destination, she was awkwardly clutching the dead albatross from her car. When she took the lift up to the conference, the lift operator said, “Did you know, this is the oldest working lift in London?” She rates it amongst one her most surreal moments. Imagine being trapped in an old elevator with a huge, rigid dead bird and being regaled with historical facts. Some people have nightmares about less trauma.
– Today Rosie is working and then going to the Barrowlands in Glasgow, UK –
