Tag Archives for Decolonising collections

Collaborating with External Partners to address Colonial Legacies and Challenge the Secondary School Curriculum in Liverpool.

Written by Olivia Beavers, National Museums Liverpool, World Museum & Sonal Mistry, Freelance Scientific Illustrator.

Just over a year ago, Sonal approached me with a request to access the vertebrate zoology collection for her Master’s thesis, which explored scientific illustration through natural science specimens. Collaborating with Sonal has helped the vertebrate zoology department to address colonial legacies and provide more context to the collections through thoughtful scientific illustration.

Olivia – World Museum

World Museum’s vertebrate zoology collection has a historic relationship between artists and specimens. Edward Lear and John Gould were just two of many illustrators who sketched and painted specimens within the 13th Earl of Derby’s zoology collection.

With so many specimens stored behind the scenes and many untold stories of collectors and colonial legacies to be explored, curators are often considering new ways to get this information across to the public. Sonal contacted the museum as a Masters illustration student asking to collaborate with the vertebrate zoology department for her thesis. I supervised Sonal’s Master’s illustration thesis project, where she produced scientific illustrations to help improve the interpretation of vertebrate zoology specimens on display. After an initial walk around the gallery with Sonal, I handed out some questionnaires to gain a sense of the public’s opinions of the information that was already available. Sonal and I went through the different illustration styles and worked through which styles would be best suited to our audience for each topic. One of the recurring points that we noticed from the questionnaires was a plea for more information for older visitors and more colour.

Continue reading →

Liverpool, Natural History and Extinction: The Case of a Real Liver Bird

Written by John-James Wilson (Lead Curator of Zoology, World Museum), Jude Piesse (Senior Lecturer in English Literature, LJMU) & Alyssa Grossman (Senior Lecturer in Communication and Media, University of Liverpool).

The interdisciplinary public engagement project ‘ENLivEN: Empire, Nature and Liverpool: Investigating and Engaging with Natural History’, is a collaboration between University of Liverpool, Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) and 14 city-wide partners. In this blog we bring together reflections from a workshop held at World Museum, Liverpool in October 2025, where we trialled approaches for the project with LJMU undergraduates. ENLivEN will develop further workshops on similarly evocative ‘catalyst’ specimens and objects held across participating institutions.

John-James Wilson (Lead Curator of Zoology, World Museum)

Spotted Green Pigeons are a species that became extinct at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

In 1793, Dr John Latham noticed two unusual taxidermized pigeons in private natural history collections in London. He described them as a new species that he called Spotted Green Pigeons. One of the specimens is now lost but the other was bought by the 13th Earl of Derby. In 1851, the 13th Earl of Derby left his specimen to the people of Liverpool in his will. Because the specimen is kept at World Museum, this specimen became known as the Liverpool Pigeon.

The Liverpool Pigeon is now the only known Spotted Green Pigeon specimen in existence. Uncertainty about the status and nearest relatives of Spotted Green Pigeons continued for over 200 years. DNA analysis in 2014 convinced scientists that Spotted Green Pigeons were a genuine, extinct species. Spotted Green Pigeons were only very distantly related to Feral Pigeons found in Liverpool and cities around the world.

Continue reading →

Seeing With Their Eyes A Poetic Reflection on the 2025 ‘From Collections to Connections’ NatSCA Conference Presentation

Written by Pauline Rutter – Independent Archival Artist, Community and Organisation Poet.

These words look out from the page with eyes I have borrowed. Eyes not shaped for vision through the specific disciplinary scientific lens. Eyes that strain to see beyond past centuries of debate on what, of all origins, is knowable and what is not. With these original eyes, would ways of seeing allow the light to travel outwards resisting funnelled perspectives and interpretations descended from imperialistic systems of Enlightenment science, colonial ideologies and narratives? In this context my eyes had opened up unevolved or re-evolved with lepidopteran vision, though not removed from all that had been taught to be seen. New eyes with sight of intensified colour that amplified nature’s interconnecting patterns, only visible outside the spectrum of the everyday, the expected, the predetermined. 

What use is butterfly sight that transforms configured objects and living matter with or without full binominal species names, into fragments like those of the intertwined and metamorphosed elements in ritualistic rapture spreading out across a Wangechi Mutu collage? 

Continue reading →

Collecting Coventry, a Temporary Exhibition at the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum

Written by Ali Wells, Curator (Herbert Collections), Herbert Art Gallery & Museum.

This blog post details a temporary exhibition at the Herbert, how it was presented, how decolonisation and feedback were integrated into the show. This is an overview, please get in touch if you would like more information on any aspect of the exhibition.

In May 2024 the Herbert launched its latest major temporary exhibition, Collecting Coventry. The display focuses on the history of collecting in Coventry museums and showcasing the breadth of the collections.

The main aims were to

  • Present the Herbert’s collections after several years of external or predominately loan-based temporary exhibitions.
  • Get out visitor favourites like the Lowry and display stored objects for the first time.
  • Look like a museum store.
  • Give visitors the opportunity to comment on aspects of museum work and ask questions relating to collections and displays. For example, Collections Development policy, display of human remains, use of technology, future exhibitions, representation.
Continue reading →

Creating a New Diorama at the Booth Museum of Natural History

Editors note: This is the second of two concurrent blogs about the new diorama at the Booth Museum. Click here to read the first and find out more about how the diorama was created.

Written by Su Hepburn, Head of Learning & Engagement, Brighton & Hove Museums.

Jazmine Miles-Long, Taxidermist © Laurence Dean Photography

Why a new diorama?

In the autumn of 2022, we started our ‘Discover our Dioramas’ project at the Booth Museum of Natural History, part of Brighton & Hove Museums. Funded by an Esmée Fairbairn Collections Fund of £50,000 we set about building the first natural history diorama at the museum in 92 years. This was a significant project for a museum whose Victorian creator Edward Booth had lined every wall with dioramas of birds. Dioramas are an ideal way of storytelling. They are visual and can get a lot of key information to audiences without the need for words.

Alongside this we were also given £3000 from Rampion Windfarms to research and display more information about people especially women involved in the museum’s history. 

These projects gave us the time and space to be playful and to make friends. To impact on our audiences, our staff, our collections, and our future practices. It has brought joy to the museum, visitor and staff alike. 

Continue reading →