MARIA NYMFIADI

Curation and Education project 

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The project 'Fantastic Animals: A Journey across Time and Culture' was a collaborative curatorial and educational project promoting cross-connections between the UCL museum collections. The project was research in collaboration with Husseina Alizada, Tatiana Machado, Yufei Wang, Mimi Wong and Muzhi Zhang and part of our MA studies in Art Education, Culture, and Practice at the Institute of Education, UCL.

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The project explored the connections between animals and culture through the collections of the three UCL Museums: The Petrie Museum of Egyptian and Sudanese Archeology, The Grant Museum of Zoology, and the Art Museum.

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During the exhibition 'A Murmuration II: The Right to Participate' at Resource of London on Holloway Road, our group used participatory practices to facilitate visitors' learning about the ways animals, exemplified by camels, lions, cats, frogs, and ibises, are represented in diverse historical and cultural contexts. The team held two drawing workshops, one at the Petrie Museum and one at the Resource for London, and four activities during the first weekend of the exhibition designed to help the visitor engage with our research exhibited on the wall.

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The research started with the lion, which has a bold presence around UCL collections; for example, the two Coptos lions (estimated to be 5000 years old) are standing as guards to the office of the UCL's Provost. Furthermore, we included four more animals native to Ancient Egypt: a bird with long legs and a downcurved bill (Ibis), a hoofed mammal (camel), one domesticated felid (cat) and an amphibian (frog). Unfortunately, the Egyptian lion (Barbary lion) and the Egyptian Ibis are now extinct.

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During the workshops, the children chose an animal from the five to draw on an imaginative or natural background. We encouraged them to propose their meanings and expressions while considering the future of animals and human-animal interaction. Their drawings were exhibited together with the research.

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Exhibition: 'A Murmuration II: The Right to Participate,' at Resource of London on Holloway Road from 26/05/23 to 1/07/23.