The next stop on my Bucket list is the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery. Spread over three floors, this beautiful building right next to Wills Memorial building not only contains art and natural history but also historical artefacts from Egypt and Assyria. This huge and varied collection is eclectic to say the least
(Photo credit: Bray and Slaughter)
Whilst their permanent collections are varied and fascinating, the temporary exhibitions that are put on by Bristol Museum and Art gallery are also fantastic.
In the past they have hosted exhibitions from the British Museum in London, but they also curate their own exhibitions that let people see some of the lesser known objects in their archive.
The current exhibition on at the Bristol Museum and Art gallery is called “death: the human experience”. I wasn’t overly keen at first, not wanting to have an existential crisis on Wednesday afternoon but I decided to give it a go.
The exhibition started with a surreal collection of objects denoting symbols of death. The lights were low and the red drapes made me feel like I was in a Victorian gothic novel. They had taxidermies of a Barn owl, crow and a wolf. Whilst some of the objects seemed very obvious, such as skeleton, other objects like a Venetian death mask were quite interesting. They also had a range of objects from Mexico, where their Día de los Muertos celebrations firmly place Mexican culture in discussions about mortality. Though I was initially underwhelmed, I soon realised that the exhibition was only just getting started.
(Photo credit: Anna Sagar)
The next section of the display centred on the stages of death, from the moment of death itself (which they debated, introducing different cultural ideas that I had never before considered), to what is done with the body afterward. This section was quite eerie as it was set up like a morgue and you had to open the hatches to read the different information – I felt like I was in CSI!
One of my favourite bits of the exhibition were the “grave goods”. These were objects that were put on the grave or in someone’s coffin. Some of them were objects were to help people in the afterlife, and some were sentimental, ranging from cigarettes to mints and jewellery. It was all very intimate and personal, and made me reflect about what objects people would associate with me when I die…a scary thought!
At the end of the exhibit they had a reflection room where you could sit and contemplate what you had learnt, to help you process it. Since there were several moments at which we were invited to think about euthanasia and the Right to Die debate – a challenging topic at the best of times – this was an excellent section to include.
Overall, I was quite impressed with the exhibition. It had a wide range of artefacts, a multimedia presentation and was very interactive, all of which made a difficult topic easier to broach. The exhibition is a great way to while away an hour, and entry to the museum is free, so why not give it a go!
(Featured photo credit: BBC)