Tag: museum
Tony Fomison’s inner werewolf
Art and monsters are two of my all-time favorite things, so I’m in (weird, twisted) heaven when the two things combine. A strange, hairy beast lurks inside the soul of New Zealand artist Tony Fomison – head over to the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa blog to read my full post about his remarkable paintings of hairy beasts. What does your inner monster look like? For New Zealand painter Tony Fomison (1939–1990) it was a creature drenched in darkness, […]
Categories: Contemporary Art, Curiosities • Tags: animal, art, curiosities, face, museum, new zealand, Tony Fomison, werewolf
Two-faced death ring
Categories: Curiosities, history, Museums • Tags: 17th century, death, face, gold, history, jewelry, memento mori, museum, ring, skull, unsettling
Children not looking at modern art
Categories: Contemporary Art, history, Ideas, Museums • Tags: art, children, humor, imagination, museum, photography
Abandoned suitcases of insane asylum patients
Categories: Contemporary Art, Curiosities, history, Museums • Tags: collection, history, institution, museum, nostalgia, outsider art, suitcase
Wax figures after the fire
I’m so unsettled and captivated by this incredible photograph of wax figures burnt and melted after the massive 1925 fire that destroyed Madame Tussauds wax museum in London. I think wax models alone are already pretty creepy, but I don’t think even the Chamber of Horrors can touch the pathos of this unintentionally gruesome scene. With missing heads and appendages, charred skin and clothing in disarray, the uncanny wax models truly look like the causalities of some great trauma. I’ve […]
Categories: Curiosities, history, Museums • Tags: body, figurine, museum, sculpture, unsettling, wax
A cluster of rats
Categories: Curiosities, history, Museums • Tags: japan, museum, netsuke, rat, sculpture, unsettling
Ridiculously photogenic New Zealand criminal
Categories: history, Museums • Tags: criminal, daniel lohill, daniel tohill, humor, mug shot, museum, new zealand, nostalgia, photography, time, victorian era
Cleaning the elephant skin
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
