Curiosity/taxidermy exhibition in London

Morbid Anatomy's Joanna Ebenstein reports from London where she visited The Museum of Everything's "Exhibition #3," "a carnivalesque spree exploring all things collectory, side-show, circus, grotto, and taxidermological." The show includes a restaging of Victorian taxidermist Walter Potter's famously strange wunderkammer, the contents of which are now owned by the likes of Damien Hirst and Sir Peter Blake. The Guardian also covered the exhibit with more history of Potter's collection.

"Morbid Anatomy on The Museum of Everything, Exhibition # 3 (Morbid Anatomy)

Genius or grotesquery? The arrestingly strange world of Walter Potter (The Guardian)

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

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Anonymous

Kittens????? That’s AWFUL.
JayByrd

Did they have a poker game after the meal?
Cnoocy

Somehow those look more like Slitheen than kittens to me. It’s the eyes, I think.
Anonymous

I swear I remember visiting something like this in England years ago (20+?) when I was just a kid. Lots of this stuff looks familiar in a “I saw it in real life” way not “I’ve seen this posted before..”

We were doing a road-trip in England and visiting alot of old castles, and we came across this weird little museum that had lots of taxidermy animals, weird things too like two-headed sheep.

Is this the same thing?
- Teresa Nielsen Hayden
  
  Yes. They were part of a very weird museum full of random artifacts.
Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Holy crap! Teresa and I saw this stuff in 1995, when it was still on display at the Jamaica Inn in Cornwall. (As referenced in the linked Grauniad article.) Only the presence of our colleague Terri Windling has prevented me from thinking it was all just a disturbing dream.
Anonymous

I used to visit the original Potter Museum in Bramber, Sussex as a child. My sister’s school was nearby. The museum was lots of fun for a small boy. Besides the taxidermy, there was also all sorts of curiosities like a section of undersea telegraph cable.

Also in Bramble is the ruins of Bramber castle.
Teresa Nielsen Hayden

OMG, it’s the taxidermical tableaux from Potter’s Museum! That place was unnerving, let me tell you. What got to me was the sense that there were no limits, and that at any moment I might turn a corner and find a tableau of The Village Election (or some such thing) done in stuffed Ituri pygmies.

I’m sorry that visitors to the exhibition won’t be able to see the kittens’ wedding, the rabbits’ schoolroom, or the guinea pigs playing cricket, which was a masterpiece — stands full of spectators, a complete band playing their instruments, and, if I recall correctly, a picnic off to one side.

I think it was the kittens’ wedding that had a little plaque on it saying (approximately) “Dear children, do not grieve for the kittens, for if they had not been used to create one of Mr. Potter’s wonderful tableaux, they would only have been made into coat-collars.”
sluggo

If you can’t make it to the Potter Museum, there is a bar in Hayward, Wisconsin called the Moccasin. Its claim to fame is several of the largest Muskie and Northern fish caught in the region. Also, the walls are covered with a variety of this: http://imgur.com/go1rr.jpg

It is a disquieting place to have a beer, if only because hundreds of tiny, still animals are having one too.
robulus

Ewoks!
Mitch

Taxidermy is kind of creepy.
- billstewart
  
  “Kind of” creepy? It’s appalling, taking dead pets and wild animals and using them for unpleasant “art”. And we’ve had two of these awful things recently without even a unicorn chaser (unless you count the Simpsons Banksy one, which already had to be chasing itself…) Ick, are shrunken heads next?
  - Mitch
    
    Yeah, it is. I’m still probably going to go and see an exhibit of human taxidermy, which they’re calling plastination, at a local shopping mall.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    When this was made, only half your children lived to puberty, and when they died, you dressed them up and took photographs of yourself snuggling with their corpses. In the era before distemper shots, kitten mortality must have been > 90%.
Rich Keller

I’ve been a fan of the tension between cute and utterly creepy for a while now. The closest I’ve seen to anything along the lines of this collection would be some of the bizarrities at the House on the Rock.

Too bad it’s not a hands-on exhibit. Although, just because you feel it, it doesn’t mean it’s there.
Anonymous

Not my picture, but part of a larger display at Fuch’s Wildlife display in Lloydminster, Saskatchewan:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/31856336@N03/5064271562/

Sadly, you can’t see it in this picture, but the Jazz band that the rabbits are dancing to is made up of black rabbits.
Anonymous

What adorable, precious little kitties. They’re so cute having their sweet little tea party. I’m totally not grossed out that their a bunch of dead animals.
apoxia

poor kitties :(
badgerbeth

I was “aw how cute is that” then I realized it was taxidermy. “Holy God!”
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Itteh Bitteh Kitteh Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!
Anonymous

the quality and angle of the picture led me to believe this was an amazing painting. i’m still not quite sure i believe otherwise.
Stefan Jones

Don’t worry, they all died of natural causes. Curiosity related fatalities, donch’a know.
monstrinho_do_biscoito

i saw the whole collection when it was in the Jamaica inn when i was a teen. I was upset when i heard the collection was being split up and sold off. This makes me happy that a least part of it is still available for the public to view.

it is quite gross tho :)
showcasejase

Cool!

Reminds me of something I saw in Adelong:

http://showcasejase.blogspot.com/2009/12/taxidermy-as-art.html