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NEWSLETTER
AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2019
   
             
             
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Dear friends and colleagues,

Plashing rains, buses careening through puddles, umbrellas jostling along pavements ... it's another autumn in London, folks.

The weather did not deter our members from attending our morning roundtable on plastic waste earlier this month. Evidently they are made of hardy stuff themselves. Neither did the autumnal chill put you off our breakfast view of Global Dickens at the Charles Dickens Museum (which, in case you missed it, runs until 3 November). 

Looking ahead at what will no doubt be a quiet month for the nation, the KQ team has thought it appropriate to treat our friends and followers to two Private Views on the theme of power displays. Yes, there are decades when nothing happens and there are months when decades happen – this sort of revolutionary sentiment is currently on view at the House of Illustration, in whose premises we'll be parading later this week for a privileged look at the many original revolutionary posters that make up Designed in Cuba: Cold War Graphics. 

Then, on Tuesday 22 October we will pay a visit to the Grant Museum of Zoology to see Displays of Power: A Natural History of Empire, which you can read more about below – in a month of many returns, from the anorak and turtle neck, to Parliament and Presidential impropriety, it is the return of Exhibition of the Month that this newsletter writer is gladdest about. 

With best wishes,

Knowledge Quarter Team

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KQ Events

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KQ Private View: Designed in Cuba – Cold War Graphics 

3 October 8:30-10:00 at the House of Illustration

All staff and comrades are invited to our private view of Designed in Cuba: Cold War Graphics, an unprecedented exhibition of original Cuban propaganda posters and magazines. A prime example of design for political persuasion, the work of Fidel Castro’s Organisation of Solidarity with the People of Asia, Africa and Latin America (OSPAAAL) was marked by uncompromising illustrations championing Cuba’s revolutionary message.

Book your place here

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KQ Walking Tour: Explore King's Cross

16 October 17:30-19:00 Meet beside the Henry Moore sculpture in front of Kings Cross Station. Your guide will be wearing a badge for identification.

Starting at King's Cross Station explore busy side streets, admire the serene calm of the canal and get a glimpse of the Knowledge Quarter partners situated in this rapidly developing part of London.

Book your place here

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What's On October

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Visit our What's On site for the pick of the events in the Knowledge Quarter over October. Bookmark it; we are regularly updating the listing. 

Find out what's on in October

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Events and Exhibitions

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It's All Academic Festival

5 October across UCL

Quiz leading academics and get hands-on with some of UCL’s most exciting research at It’s All Academic – a free festival for all ages and interests with talks, tours, workshops, screenings, pop-up events and interactive experiences throughout the day.

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Data Debate: Cities – smart or sinister?

21 October, 19:00-21:00 from Alan Turing Institute

The Alan Turing Institute presents a talk at the British Library on the role of AI in transforming our cities, from managing traffic to monitoring crime. AI is all around us and meant to improve our everyday lives. But at what cost to our privacy?

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Buddhism

Opens 25 October at the British Library

Encounter the outstanding beauty of Buddhist manuscripts and artworks in the largest exhibition of its kind ever held at the British Library. Explore rare treasures from the Library’s collection including colourful scrolls, artefacts decorated with great detail and lavishly illuminated books spanning 2,000 years and 20 countries. Discover the origins of Buddhism, explore its teachings, and understand what these mean for Buddhists in the world today.

Opening times: Monday - Saturday: 09:30-18:00

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'Are the Humanities for Us?' A Being Human Festival Preview

30 October, 18:30-20:00 at Rich Mix, Shoreditch 

A preview of the Being Human festival from the University of London, this free public discussion will address underlying issues around black, Asian and minority ethnic diversity in both academia and the cultural and creative industries. The evening will include special contributions and performances from young people who work with Arts Emergency, a mentoring charity and network.

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Jobs and Opportunities in the KQ

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Exhibition of the Month

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Displays of Power: A Natural History of Empire
Grant Museum of Zoology, University College London

Mahogany cabinets, taxidermy, formalin jars and skeletons contribute to the gothic charm of the Grant Museum of Zoology, home to one of the oldest natural history collections in the UK. A fantastic cast of extinct animal remains, like those of the Quagga and Thylacine, add to the sense of phantasmagoria, but are the impressions set off by natural history collections problematic? And do they conceal a darker story?

A new exhibition at the museum arrives on the back of a paper published in the journal of Natural Sciences Collections Association, in which authors Miranda Lowe of the Natural History Museum and Subhadra Das of UCL argue that the colonial origins of natural history collections ought to be made visible to the public. In Displays of Power curators at the Grant Museum have done just that.

Specimens have been singled out, from beaver to pangolin. Whether furry or scaley, behind each animal lie different strands of a predominantly destructive and violent human history: the international trade in extinction our material desires precipitated; the blood sports that sailed with the colonists; even the voracious self-defeating arms race to supply collectors and collections such as those begun by Robert Grant – Empire is the common thread that knits these stories together. The Grant Museum have not overlooked the more banal aspects of trade across empire either; consider the Shipworm specimens sent back for study to aid in fairer sailing, or a note on the practice of exchanging tropical birds  between collections – a nineteenth-century form of Pokemon.

Writing in 1913, zoologist William Temple Hornaday warned that vanishing bird populations would not survive the 'hounds of commerce'. One of the pioneers of species and habitat conservation, Hornaday also imprisoned a Mbuti man in his Bronx zoo as an exhibit for the public. Here in the Grant Museum certain specimens manifest colonial attitudes of superiority towards the colonised – the bengal tigers, the exhibition argues, were hunted as a display of imperial muscle, and the eventual conservation policies applied to Asian elephants, used to exploit the land, were merely a way of justifying British monopoly over the elephant trade in India. On the floor of the effulgent Micrarium a display quotes former curator EA Minchin who thought the discoveries made using microscopes would 'make the Tropics habitable by white men'. 

One could argue that the museum is not quite bold enough. The display signs on the glass panels – perhaps symbolically – are difficult to find among the heady assortment of pelt and bone. However, as you cast your eyes over the dance of specimens, the signs, once discovered, make for a stiff and slow-acting medicine whose effect is to radically shift your perspective on the entire collection – and when a museum can you make you rethink and reimagine its collection, it has done something extraordinary. 

Admittedly, this is quite a long review, but it's by no means comprehensive! There's plenty more to discover on the KQ Private View of the exhibition on 22 October.

Join the Knowledge Quarter Private View of Displays of Power at the Grant Museum of Zoology, Tuesday 22 October, 8:30-10:00

Read More:

Grant Museum Blog | What's On at the Grant Museum

Until 7 March 2020
Mon-Sat, 13:00-17:00

Grant Museum of Zoology, Rockefeller Building, 21 University Street, WC1E 6DE

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  For more information please contact Jodie Eastwood
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