Horniman

Whilst in Forest Hill (one of my favourite areas) last Friday, I decided to visit one of my top London museums, the Horniman. Lorisidae have been in my dreams of late and my primary goal was to find a specimen. I’ve explored the musical instruments and anthropology collections numerous times before whilst living in nearby New Cross, but my favourite gallery at the moment is the natural history section. They have some hugely informative displays comparing brain sizes and skeletons of different animals but I decided against any squeamish pictures. I’m going through a primate phase at the moment and am always awed by the gorilla skeletons (below) as at first glance it looks like a display of mismatched human skeletons. If Wes Anderson were to curate a museum gallery it would surely be the Horniman natural history collection. The thoughtfully laid out displays, pastel backgrounds and gratuitous use of ‘Futura’ font lend the gallery a certain Anderson aesthetic. Without my sketch book I happily wandered around taking photographs and scribbling notes on which animals to further research. There was such a feeling of tranquility and calm in the upstairs gallery especially and I spent about an hour alone, just me and the exhibits. After, I sat in the medicine garden listening to the wind chimes and thinking about all the thousands and thousands of creatures in the world, and how at one time we were all the same.