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 will be hosted on Zoom to allow for international participation, followed by a synthesised Q&A and roundtable discussion.
The theme of this fourth session is Poetry, and is a more relaxed Unnatural History Museum Late! It will comprise of readings from poets who work at the intersections of natural history and museums, featuring readings from and discussion with:
Helena Hunter (Nottingham Trent University)
Jon Woodward (Harvard Museum of Natural History)
Isabel Galleymore (University of Birmingham)
This event series is organised by Dr Verity Burke as John Pollard Newman Fellow of Climate Change and the Arts at University College Dublin.
Image credit: : ‘WARPPEd Exhibition’. Paolo Viscardi, National Museum of Ireland: Natural History.
