[diarish] NHM: venom & whales
Jan. 9th, 2018 05:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaberettI am slowly coming to a conclusion about the NHM, which is that temporary photography exhibitions (WPoY; spaaaaaaaace) are usually excellent, where non-photography exhibitions are of a generally lower standard (to my mind) and much more likely to be disappointing.
I hypothesise that this is a combination of (1) photographs forcing sensible curation in terms of the amount of space given to each item, and (2) photographs speaking, as it were, for themselves, rather than needing explanatory captions.
All of which being said, I was much more pleased with the whales than the venom, but would probably have been grumpy about both if I'd been paying real money (rather than "I'm a member" fake money).
From Venom I learned that slow lorises have poison glands in their elbows, more (though less than I'd have liked) about the creation of antivenoms, and a very little more about the composition and mechanisms of action of venoms (multiple chemicals targetting different systems in a variety of combinations and stages) plus drug development arising from investigation of venoms (there was a really disproportionate focus on dicks in this section). There was also a remarkably large number of #Aesthetic display cases filled only with Atmospheric Labware, a lot of sad animals in jars, and a live tarantula, but the caption didn't even have the good grace to mention that when a tarantula is called "blue" or "burgundy" or whatever it's because of the colour of their leg hair, and that if you put your face close up this is actually discernible to non-geologists. This is a Fact that I expressed at my party, being in this instanceme_and and sebastienne, and to my decided amusement several other people who'd been in earshot started peering in more detail at the leg hair. The most disappointing case, to my mind, was one that displayed all the venemous species in the UK... with an offhand remark that most of them aren't venemous to humans, and absolutely 0 detail on what their venom does target and (what we know about) why we're immune to it. Curation generally disappointing: the "how venom hurts us" section set up to be spoopy and disorienting, which in practice meant it was very dark and everyone was trying to crowd around tiny little displays in tight spaces (at above-my-eye-height, in many instances), with loads of empty space that just didn't have anything to do in it, with a very sudden transition to bright white straightforward-path "but we can also use it in MEDICAL SCIENCE".
Whales I was much keener on, and actually a little excited to go around a second time (with B, having previously been with A in December for a friend's birthday trip). Things learned include: proto-whales had USELESS LITTLE VESTIGIAL FEET and they're the BEST THING; the mechanical role of blubber in efficient swimming; how filter feeding actually works, which had somehow never previously been explained to me in a way that I correctly understood; how we know that toothy and toothless whales diverged from a common ancestor (foetal tooth buds!); what happens to a whale's lungs when it dives, and relatedly some more about how echolocation works anatomically (recycled air! phonic lips! whales don't have any external ears at all!); and some fascinating orca sociology I really wish the exhibition had gone into more detail on, to do with hunting and dietary habits being passed down within family groups, and being identifiable from patterns of tooth wear and indeed the isotopic makeup of teeth. Curation much better: exhibits sensibly spaced out, everything at an accessible-to-a-wide-variety-of-heights level, text much more readable and mostly informative rather than pointlessly dramatic, much more ability to move sensibly around the exhibit and to make decisions about what to skip (or not).
I wish I could work out what the pattern was on which non-photography temporary exhibitions I'll enjoy and which I won't; so far I've appreciated Corals and Whales (and, to be fair, butterflies), and been pretty disappointed by Venom and Colours. I'll report back if I manage to work it out.
I hypothesise that this is a combination of (1) photographs forcing sensible curation in terms of the amount of space given to each item, and (2) photographs speaking, as it were, for themselves, rather than needing explanatory captions.
All of which being said, I was much more pleased with the whales than the venom, but would probably have been grumpy about both if I'd been paying real money (rather than "I'm a member" fake money).
From Venom I learned that slow lorises have poison glands in their elbows, more (though less than I'd have liked) about the creation of antivenoms, and a very little more about the composition and mechanisms of action of venoms (multiple chemicals targetting different systems in a variety of combinations and stages) plus drug development arising from investigation of venoms (there was a really disproportionate focus on dicks in this section). There was also a remarkably large number of #Aesthetic display cases filled only with Atmospheric Labware, a lot of sad animals in jars, and a live tarantula, but the caption didn't even have the good grace to mention that when a tarantula is called "blue" or "burgundy" or whatever it's because of the colour of their leg hair, and that if you put your face close up this is actually discernible to non-geologists. This is a Fact that I expressed at my party, being in this instance
me_and and sebastienne, and to my decided amusement several other people who'd been in earshot started peering in more detail at the leg hair. The most disappointing case, to my mind, was one that displayed all the venemous species in the UK... with an offhand remark that most of them aren't venemous to humans, and absolutely 0 detail on what their venom does target and (what we know about) why we're immune to it. Curation generally disappointing: the "how venom hurts us" section set up to be spoopy and disorienting, which in practice meant it was very dark and everyone was trying to crowd around tiny little displays in tight spaces (at above-my-eye-height, in many instances), with loads of empty space that just didn't have anything to do in it, with a very sudden transition to bright white straightforward-path "but we can also use it in MEDICAL SCIENCE".Whales I was much keener on, and actually a little excited to go around a second time (with B, having previously been with A in December for a friend's birthday trip). Things learned include: proto-whales had USELESS LITTLE VESTIGIAL FEET and they're the BEST THING; the mechanical role of blubber in efficient swimming; how filter feeding actually works, which had somehow never previously been explained to me in a way that I correctly understood; how we know that toothy and toothless whales diverged from a common ancestor (foetal tooth buds!); what happens to a whale's lungs when it dives, and relatedly some more about how echolocation works anatomically (recycled air! phonic lips! whales don't have any external ears at all!); and some fascinating orca sociology I really wish the exhibition had gone into more detail on, to do with hunting and dietary habits being passed down within family groups, and being identifiable from patterns of tooth wear and indeed the isotopic makeup of teeth. Curation much better: exhibits sensibly spaced out, everything at an accessible-to-a-wide-variety-of-heights level, text much more readable and mostly informative rather than pointlessly dramatic, much more ability to move sensibly around the exhibit and to make decisions about what to skip (or not).
I wish I could work out what the pattern was on which non-photography temporary exhibitions I'll enjoy and which I won't; so far I've appreciated Corals and Whales (and, to be fair, butterflies), and been pretty disappointed by Venom and Colours. I'll report back if I manage to work it out.