A new “dead zoo” exhibition displaying objects from the Natural History Museum during its temporary closure has opened in Dublin.
The famous Merrion Street museum, known colloquially as the Dead Zoo, closed in September for refurbishments likely to take several years.
Its replacement exhibition, entitled the Dead Zoo Lab, has now opened at the National Museum in Collins Barracks. It has been designed to allow for ongoing changes to the displays, offering a broader range of the natural history collection over time.
Approximately 1,300 objects will be on public display at any one time, including mammals, birds, geology, entomology, amphibians, reptiles and marine life.
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Visitors can see some familiar favourites such as Spoticus the giraffe and the giant Irish deer.
[ A buzz of discovery in the Dead ZooOpens in new window ]
“The curators have done a huge amount of work on putting tons of stuff in the cases to actually make the diversity of the different animal groups come to life,” natural history keeper Paolo Viscardi told The Irish Times.
“Really, that’s the whole point of this space – it’s to give us a bit of elbow room to try things out, to experiment, to change things around a little bit. But in the cases we get a chance to really bombard people with huge amounts of cool stuff.”
For Emma Murphy, curator of terrestrial zoology at the Natural History Museum, the dodo is her favourite specimen on display. It is the first time in years that visitors can see the skeleton of the flightless bird which became extinct in the late 17th century.
“It was on permanent display on the balconies of Merrion Street which have been closed now since about 2007 and are going to be part of our major refurbishment,” Ms Murphy said.
“If you look closely at the skeleton, you’ll be able to see that some parts are real and some parts are fake. So the real bone is made up of bones of different individuals that were found in kind of boggy marshland in Mauritius.” Other parts are made from wood.
Additionally, a selection of delicate glass models from the Blaschka Glass Models of Marine Life is on display. The National Museum of Ireland has the world’s largest collections of the models, created in the 19th century by German glass artists Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka.
Some visitors to the Dead Zoo Lab on Tuesday had fond memories of visiting the Natural History Museum and welcomed the opportunity to bring their children and grandchildren to the new exhibition.
Ivan McCarthy from Swords, Co Dublin, brought his grandchildren. Having taken his children to the Merrion Square version many many years ago, he hopes his grandchildren will “do the same with their own kids in the future, and it’ll keep going forever.”
Muireann Banks was exploring the exhibition with her nephew Enzo (five). “I came here as a child over in Merrion Square, so it’s great to come in and have a look at all the animals,” she said.
Dr Patrick Roycroft, curator of geology at the Natural History Museum, is particularly excited for visitors to see his case of zoned micas, one of the most common rock forming minerals in the world and “the most extraordinary thing you’re going to see mineralogically”.
He wants “everybody from seven-year-olds to professors of mineralogy to know that this exists and that there’s a ton of stuff, information and wonder that you can get out of it both scientifically and visually.”
Director of collections and access at the National Museum of Ireland, Dr Éimear O’Connor, said the new exhibition “has been designed to promote and encourage collaboration with communities, artists and scientists, all of which will inform the interpretation of the natural history collections for the museum on Merrion Street when it reopens following the refurbishment and conservation works.”
The National Museum of Ireland is open seven days a week and admission is free.
