Natural history buffs, this one’s for you. In a rare collaboration, London’s prestigious Natural History Museum is showcasing more than 200 items at the ArtScience Museum this November. The Treasures of the Natural World exhibition marks the first time the UK museum has agreed to let its artefacts travel to Southeast Asia.
Hand-picked from more than 80 million artefacts and specimens to represent the best of the museum’s collection, this display includes animals, insects, artworks, and gems, as well as books and items that once belonged to some of the greatest names in science, including Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace.
As you stroll through the space, you’ll be taken on a journey through history — all the way from the Enlightenment of the 18th century to modern day. Spread across five themed galleries, the exhibition starts with the formation of the Natural History Museum in 1881, followed by a showcase of paraphernalia that has inspired scientists to answer some of Earth’s biggest mysteries.
After that, you’ll be taken on the adventures of scientific exploration pioneers, from Captain James Cook’s first voyage to Australia and New Zealand to Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s journey to reach the South Pole.
Next up: extinct creatures, including the dodo bird, the Tasmanian tiger, the giant ground sloth, and the sabre-toothed cat. The exhibition then ends with specimens from the museum that are studied by researchers around the world.
Highlights include a handwritten extract from Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, a Martian meteorite, and an enigmatic “cursed” amethyst. Also keep an eye out for 487-million-year-old giant trilobites (flat sea creatures with a hard outer skeleton), the mineral Jadarite (a freakishly close match to the fictional kryptonite in Superman comics) — which was discovered in 2006 — and a selection of Wallace’s collection of insects from his Malay Archipelago expedition to Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia.
Treasures of the Natural World is on from Nov 25-Apr 29, 2018 at ArtScience Museum. Adults $17, Singapore residents $13.60.
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