Darwin moss. ©Stephen Devine at The Manchester Museum. (web image)MANCHESTER.- Since entering The Manchester Museum’s Gothic tower on 27th June, Ansuman Biswas has identified a separate object on each day of his residency, calling on the public to reassess the value of museums’ hidden collections, and encouraging debate around the issues of conservation and extinction. Presenting objects including a human skull, beautiful diatoms (microscopic algae), a malaria-bearing Anopheles mosquito and even snail shells collected after a takeaway meal, the Hermit has questioned whether museums need to keep such large collections, many of them rarely if ever seen by anyone, and has addressed much larger themes of the fragility of ecosystems and the necessity to protect all vulnerable forms of life. Today’s object, a piece of moss collected by Darwin in 1833 during the legendary Voyage of the Beagle, is one of fifteen Charles Darwin specimens held by The Manchester Museum. Through his daily blog, the hermit will draw attention to this small sample of moss, and will ask whether such a specimen, lying for years in a drawer in the Museum, is really worth retaining. He will argue that it should be discarded, unless someone can convince him, by contributing to the blog, that it is worthy of long term preservation. The Manchester Museum will be displaying the moss alongside other Darwin specimens at Big Saturday on 8th August 2009, as part of The Evolutionist: A Darwin Extravaganza. ...
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