Notes from the Horniman Museum

Went to the Horniman Museum yesterday, seeing as it’s just on my doorstep in South London. The museum staffer in me picked up on a few things, but I also enjoyed it as just a visitor too. I jotted down a few notes when I got back, which I’ve shared below for anyone interested.

General notes

• Museum looks beautiful from the outside, and is set in some nice gardens, which make it feel less ‘urban’ than most London museums.
• Not much of an entrance. You can’t see any objects until you get further inside. Instead there’s a shop, cafe and information desk. There was a tatty flipchart showing the events on, and a few craft-y childrens sculptures hanging up. Looked more like a youth centre than a museum, which was a shame. Grand entrances are important.
• The museum makes a lot of its heritage (over 100 years old). See Centenary Gallery notes below.
• The free map has a good, clear floorplan, plus a simple, concise introduction to the museum. Shame it’s in black and white, but it does the job well.

Music gallery

• Panel by the entrance clearly explains layout of gallery – gives you an idea about orientation and what to expect.
• The cultural section – ‘the rhythm of life’ – was the least interesting bit for me. Felt a bit worthy somehow.
• The middle section – ‘an ideal sound’ – looked at instrument manufacture, largely the instruments from the Boosey & Hawkes factory. I found the meta story, of how this collection was acquired from the factory’s own museum when it shut down, even more compelling thank the instruments themselves.
• Final section just crammed tons and tons of instruments into a beautiful wall-length glass case. Again, more meta content, with much of the panel text describing the various systems of classifying instruments (academics love classification, it seems).
• Also some nice interactive tables, where you could select different instruments to listen to. Very nicely done, although it would have been nicer to anchor it to the cases more. Maybe subtly light up the objects in the case as you select them on the screen?
• The ‘hands-on’ bit was full of kids thrashing a few instruments as hard as they could. This is standard museum behaviour for young children, but something about the percussive instruments seem to make them ever more determined to hit them even harder. Luckily, most of the instruments seem to have been able to stand the thrashing. Made a terrible racket though.

Centenary Gallery

• Entirely meta – a gallery dedicated to the history of the museum, its collections, its founder (Frederick Horniman), and its various curators.
• ‘Torture chair’ place right at the entrance. Talk about placing your most intriguing objects up front! This has apparently fascinated visitors for decades. And it’s not even entirely real (cobbled together from various bits and sold as a curiosity).
• Again, there’s a panel describing the gallery layout. There’s an order of sorts (a cross between chronological and thematic), but you don’t have to follow it.
• Isn’t afraid to both acknowledge and condemn strongly, former racist (and it uses that word) museum practise of displaying its ethnography collection to ‘educate’ visitors on the ‘evolution of culture’ (where non-Western culture was ‘primitive’).
• Interesting fact: the museum holds a collection of thousands of preserved butterflies.
• More meta stuff looking at how collections can be classified. Makes the point that no classification is ‘correct’.

Natural history gallery

• Lots and lots and lots of stuffed animals.
• Interesting facts about wasps: most wasps are parasitic and live inside other creatures, over 5000 kinds in the UK alone, lots of still un-named species, Horniman Museum is working on identification guide for just one group of wasps: banchines (one Google result) – cutting edge research!
• Do not touch the walrus! It’s pretty big.
• Nice panel explaining how keeping a collection of old stuffed animals can actually help modern scientific development. In case you were wondering (I was).

Temporary exhibition: Great White Bear

• An art piece.Two artists tracked down every stuffed polar bear in the UK and photographed them in situ. The photos are displayed along with details of each bear, and one actual stuffed polar bear, on loan from another museum.
• Incredibly moving. Has a sadness and an intrigue factor. A few of the bears were transported live from the Arctic to go into zoos. One of which was ‘shot because it turned rogue’.
• The context of the exhibition being next door to a gallery full of stuffed animals is quite thought-provoking.
• Some of the bears were positioned in a way to make them look fierce. Others were placed into more ‘natural’ positions. Just goes to show: even taxidermy can lie.
• Museum feels compelled to inform you that it now only acquires animals that died naturally or as the result of an accident.
• Closes Sun 25 March 2007, but will doubtless continue to travel to other museums. Worth seeing!

Environment room

• Live exhibit: bee hive, in glass so you can see what’s happening. Luckily the bees can’t escape (except to outside). Looks a bit messy though.
• Lots of panels that are just mounted bits of printed paper. Very cheap. Galleries can’t be done well on no budget.

Still to explore

• New aquarium – sounds good.
• African worlds gallery – missed this somehow.
• Textile display – I avoided this.
• Conservatory.
• Horniman gardens.

Final thoughts

• Very professional and well-designed for a small museum.
• Needs a better cafe.
• Great that it’s free, and well supported by local and national institutions.