Taking a break from the various art galleries I’ve been visiting, I spent an afternoon at the Horniman Museum. As I explored the fossils and ageing artefacts, I felt like I was walking through the past.
With a special focus on anthropology and natural history, the Horniman is definitely my type of museum. Not that I don’t love to visit all the beautiful art galleries around London, but I feel I may just be a more science-y type museum lover when it comes down to it. After walking around the beautiful gardens surrounding the museum, I spent hours walking through the different collections of fossils, animal exhibits, and cultural items from all over the world.
The first place I went was the Natural History section. I probably spent the majority of my time in this room. I read all about now-extinct animals and their present day relatives, got to see recreations of what they would have looked like and how animals have evolved over time. I always love seeing things in museums I have prior knowledge about, and this time the many documentaries I have watched about ancient animals and evolution came in handy.
The balcony boats a large collection of fossils of all different types of classifications. The glass displays of shells and crustaceans reminded me of class projects I have done in the past. While I preferred looking at the shells and butterflies rather than the spiders, snakes, and insects, overall I really love the collection.
Near the Natural History collection is a stunning photographic exhibit titled “After Life”, shot by photography Sean Dooley. The photographs highlight extinct and endangered species through a collection of beautiful portraits.
The African culture exhibit was extremely interesting as well, having artefacts of cultural importance from Egypt to Botswana. It was amazing to see the huge cultural differences between people as time has gone on.
The permanent place for anthropological artefacts is in the Centenary Gallery. Filled with items from all over the world to Asia, Africa, North America and more.
The Music Gallery holds a fascinating- and large collection of instruments, past and present. From interactive tables teaching you how to play the instruments, to the evolution of sounds, the music gallery is a place you can easily spend long amounts of time if you’re even the slightest bit interested.
The Horniman overall struck me as a very kid-friendly museum as well. The large illustrations and many interactive sections always had tons of kids around them, and there is even an entire hands-on area for kids to really get excited about.
The Horniman offers two paid areas, the aquarium and the Amazon Adventure exhibit. Personally, my favourite part of an aquarium, anytime I go to one, is always the jellyfish area. The Horniman’s collection was no disappointment to my expectations of a quality jellyfish collection.
I ended up spending a lovely afternoon out of the cold win and rain that are so common now that autumn is in full swing. Head on down to the Horniman and find your own favourite collection!
The museum is open daily from 10:30AM-5:30 PM. The gardens are open until sunset. For more information, please visit http://www.horniman.ac.uk/.
