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NatSCA Digital Digest – May 2023

Compiled by Glenn Roadley, NatSCA Committee Member, Curator of Natural Science at The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery.

Welcome to the May edition of NatSCA Digital Digest.

A monthly blog series featuring the latest on where to go, what to see and do in the natural history sector including jobs, exhibitions, conferences and training opportunities. If you have any top tips and recommendations for our next Digest please drop an email to blog@natsca.org.

Sector News

NatSCA Conference

The NatSCA annual conference and AGM was held at The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery on Thursday 27th and Friday 28th April 2023. The focus this year was So how do we actually do all this? Hopeful futures and turning theory into practice for big issues in natural history collections.

With 86 delegates present each day plus over 20 online, it was great to welcome everyone back to physical NatSCA conferences. A huge thanks to everyone that attended and to our speakers for the brilliant talks! For those that were unable to attend, we’re hoping to make the presentations available online in the near future.

SPNHC Conference

The 38th Annual Meeting of The Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections is being held in San Francisco, California 28 May – 2 June 2023. Full details here.

SHNH International Summer Meeting

This year’s SHNH International Summer Meeting, ‘The Language of Nature’, will take place at Thinktank, Millennium Point, Birmingham on Tuesday 13 June 2023 (with visits planned for 14 June). This one-day international meeting will explore the language of nature in its broadest sense. Over centuries, different formats and mediums, stylistic approaches and classification systems have been used to describe and represent the natural world. These ‘languages’ influence how we conceive of nature, how we categorise it, how we wonder at it and who we credit with its ‘discovery’. This conference aims to bring new perspectives to the history of natural history writing and other expressions of nature, exploring not only the creativity and originality involved but also the limitations and biases that shape our understanding of the natural world and how it has been perceived throughout history. Full details here.

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‘Dino Takedown’ at the Natural History Museum of Denmark.

Written by Bethany Palumbo, ACR, Head of Conservation Unit, The Natural History Museum of Denmark.

At the Natural History Museum of Denmark, work is currently underway to prepare and move thousands of specimens to a new building, located in the Botanical Gardens in Copenhagen. One such specimen is ‘Misty’ our beloved 17-meter-long Diplodocus. Misty has been welcoming visitors to the Zoological Museum since 2014 and is a much-loved part of our exhibitions.

Taking this specimen down was symbolic in many ways. It was a goodbye to the old building but also a celebration of the new building and future of the museum. We wanted to commemorate this milestone and so we decided to make the Diplodocus deinstallation into an outreach event called the ‘Dino Takedown’. This would create a rare opportunity for the public to watch the deinstallation process, ask questions and further understand the types of conservation work we do in a museum.

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NatSCA Digital Digest – April 2023

Compiled by Milo Phillips, Assistant Curator of Entomology for National Museums Scotland.

Welcome to the April edition of NatSCA Digital Digest.

A monthly blog series featuring the latest on where to go, what to see and do in the natural history sector including jobs, exhibitions, conferences, and training opportunities. We are keen to hear from you if you have any top tips and recommendations for our next Digest, please drop an email to blog@natsca.org.

Sector News

Registration for the NatSCA 2023 conference closes on April 20th so get booking ASAP. The conference will be held on Thursday 27th and Friday 28th April 2023. Stoke-on-Trent Museums will be hosting the conference at The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery. The conference will include gallery and collection tours, presentations, poster sessions and the annual AGM. For all the info and to register, check out our webpage.

Register via Eventbrite through the NatSCA website: https://www.natsca.org/natsca2023. Members can access discounted booking rates by entering a promo code which has been distributed. If you are a NatSCA member and have not received a code via email, please contact membership@natsca.org. We look forward to seeing you later this month!

SPNHC Conference

The 38th Annual Meeting of The Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections is being held in San Francisco, California 28 May – 2 June 2023. Early bird registration ends this Friday 15th April. See details and registration here.

Science, Gender & Sociability in a Northern City c. 1775-1820 Conference

This interdisciplinary event brings together scholars in women’s history, the history of science, literature, theatrical performance, music and historical archaeology from across the UK and the US, to contextualise and analyse the diary of Jane Ewbank (1778‒1824). More information on speakers, and links for bookings, can be found here. The conference runs Thursday 8th to 10th June 2023.

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NatSCA Digital Digest – March 2023

Welcome to the March edition of NatSCA Digital Digest.

Compiled by Olivia Beavers, Assistant Curator of Vertebrate Zoology at World Museum, National Museums Liverpool.

A monthly blog series featuring the latest on where to go, what to see and do in the natural history sector including jobs, exhibitions, conferences, and training opportunities. We are keen to hear from you if you have any top tips and recommendations for our next Digest, please drop an email to blog@natsca.org.

Sector News

NatSCA Conference 2023

Registration is open for the Annual Conference & AGM of the Natural Sciences Collections Association will be held on Thursday 27th and Friday 28th April 2023. Stoke-on-Trent Museums will be hosting the conference at The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery. The conference will include gallery and collection tours, presentations, poster sessions and the annual AGM. The focus this year is:

So how do we actually do all this? Hopeful futures and turning theory into practice for big issues in natural history collections

This is the “How To…” conference for people working with natural history collections. The last few years have seen unprecedented changes in the expectations for what the museum sector can deliver. Global and local social and environmental issues have coincided to reinforce the needs of museums to consider their reinvention and relevance.

Register via Eventbrite through the NatSCA website: https://www.natsca.org/natsca2023. Members can access discounted booking rates by entering a promo code which has been distributed. If you are a NatSCA member and have not received a code via email, please contact membership@natsca.org. We look forward to seeing you in April!

SPNHC Conference

The 38th Annual Meeting of The Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections is being held in San Francisco, California 28 May – 2 June 2023. Full details here.

Unnatural History Museum session

This session will be held on 22nd March 2023 on the topic of decolonising natural history museums. 

“We are at a crucial historical moment, in which the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List has announced a catastrophic decline in global biodiversity. Yet nature is, necessarily, interpreted in museums, through taxidermy dioramas and skeletal mounts; virtual tours and digital databases; image, text and film. The Unnatural History Museum brings together museum professionals and academics across disciplines to platform vital conversations about the museum mediation of the natural world during the sixth mass extinction.”

Each session is hosted on Zoom to allow for international participation, and takes the format of short presentations focussed around a specific theme, followed by a synthesised Q&A and roundtable discussion. To register and find out more click here.

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Aliens Escape the Herbarium

Written by Annette Townsend (Interdisciplinary Natural History Artist) & Sally Whyman (Curator: Botany Curator, Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales).

Aliens 1956. Close-up. Annette Marie Townsend. Image Dewi Tannatt Lloyd

Plants growing on the wall of a London art gallery!! On closer inspection you discover they are alien plants, introduced to the UK. Looking even closer you realise they are delicate sculptures, handmade from beeswax, paraffin wax, tinned copper wire, tissue paper, cotton thread, artists’ pigments, acrylic paint and acrylic varnish.

Aliens 1992. Close-up. Annette Marie Townsend. Image Dewi Tannatt Lloyd

Mounted on stainless steel plates with stainless steel strips, and epoxy printed collector labels, in a juxtaposition of historic and modern materials and techniques, each sculpture mimics a real herbarium sheet, found in the Welsh National Herbarium, Amgueddfa Cymru.   

Wax passion flowers in progress. Image A.M. Townsend

The brainchild of Annette Marie Townsend and Sally Whyman who wanted to combine the skill, vision and dexterity of the artist with the depth of collection knowledge of the curator, allowing the plants to come to life and escape the confining folders and cabinets of the herbarium. This Aliens series allows the plants tell their stories of biodiversity change and invasive species to new audiences, further afield than museum visitors and botanical researchers.    

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