history | The Museum of Ridiculously Interesting Things

Curators cleaning an elephant skin at the Museum of Natural History.

Cleaning the elephant skin

12 July 2012 by Chelsea Nichols

My last post on the inflatable skins in James Lomax’s Untitled (Me and My Friend) (2011) reminded me of this ridiculously interesting series of photographs from the archives of the American Museum of Natural History. Taken between 1933-1935 by Thane L. Bierwert, they show museum staff engaged in the task of cleaning and re-mounting the skin of an elephant for display. As well as offering a great (and I suspect rare) behind-the-scenes glance of a 1930s natural history museum, that […]

Categories: history, Museums • Tags: elephant, history, museum, skin, taxidermy, unsettling

Three ridiculously interesting photos for art history nerds

1 May 2012 by Chelsea Nichols

These three intriguing photographs have no real relationship with one another, except that each image reveals a little bit of the hidden history of art. Read on for more about these remarkable images. Picasso wearing a ‘cow head mask’, 1949 The first image is a light-hearted 1949 photograph of Pablo Picasso on a French beach, wearing what is described as a cow’s head mask. However, I believe that the image is mislabeled and that he is actually modelling a bull’s […]

Categories: history • Tags: American Gothic, art, artist, face, history, images, models, photography, Picasso, Robert Cornelius

Victorian photograph of three children with mother hidden under draped fabric.

Hidden mothers in Victorian portraits

5 January 2012 by Chelsea Nichols

The first photographic images in the late 1820s had to be exposed for hours in order to capture them on film. Improvements in the technology led to this exposure time being drastically cut down to minutes, then seconds, throughout the 19th century. But in the meantime, the long exposures gave us a few unmistakable Victorian photography conventions, such as the stiff postures and unsmiling faces of people trying to remain perfectly still while their photograph was being taken. Seems children […]

Categories: history • Tags: art, children, hidden mothers, history, humor, images, photography, victorian era

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Illustration of Baba Yaga, by Ivan Bilibin. Russuan fairytales.

GUEST POST: Claire Atwater on The Bone Mother illustrations

3 January 2012 by Chelsea Nichols

Categories: history • Tags: art, fairy tale, folklore, guest post, history, illustration, images, trees

Irina Werning: Back to the Future

15 December 2011 by Chelsea Nichols

Categories: Contemporary Art, Ideas • Tags: art, body, children, history, images, nostalgia, photography, time

Wedding dress made from a parachute that saved the grrom during World War Two.

WWII wedding dress made from a life-saving parachute

5 December 2011 by Chelsea Nichols

Categories: history, Museums • Tags: dress, history, museum, parachute, textile, war, wedding, WWII

E.J. Bellocq's photograph of Storyville prostitute with scratched out face.

EJ Bellocq and the Storyville prostitutes

12 November 2011 by Chelsea Nichols

Categories: history • Tags: art, erotic, history, photography, prostitute, unsettling

Illustration of Liston surgiccal knives.

GUEST POST: Mike Crump on Robert Liston and the Spectacle of Surgical Amputation

4 October 2011 by Chelsea Nichols

Today’s post comes from Mike Crump, a brilliant young neuroscientist doing impressive brain research at Oxford (which is far too complicated for my humble art historical mind to fully understand, let alone articulate to you, so I won’t embarrass myself trying). When not discovering awesome brain things, Mike is interested in the dark corners of the history of science and medicine. He’s written a great article for the blog about a ridiculously interesting Victorian surgeon, Robert Liston, who was one […]

Categories: Guest Post, history • Tags: guest post, history, medicine, science, surgeon, victorian era

Mug shot of Mary Spanger, 19th century New Zealand criminal

19th Century Mug Shots from New Zealand

14 September 2011 by Chelsea Nichols

This slideshow displays a sample of the amazing 19th century mug shots that formed part of a show I curated at the New Zealand Police Museum last year, Suspicious Looking (available here as an online exhibition). Until then, these incredible images had never before been shown to the public. What is it about old mug shots that is so utterly compelling? When we look at them, do we try to see evidence of their criminal nature written in their expression? […]

Categories: history, Museums • Tags: criminal, history, mug shot, museum, new zealand, photography, police, victorian era

The Museum of Ridiculously Interesting Things

a collection of ridiculously interesting art, objects, ideas, and history

Tag: history