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A UK Museum Challenged Bored Curators Worldwide to Share the Creepiest Objects in Their Collections. Things Got Really Weird, Fast

by admin
Apr 20, 2020
artnet

What’s a museum social media
manager to do with no exhibitions on the horizon? The Yorkshire
Museum recently put out a call on Twitter asking for museum experts
to submit pictures of the creepiest objects in their collections.
And things got weird—fast. 

To kick things off, the UK
museum posted a picture of a hair bun that belonged to a Roman
woman in the 3rd or 4th centuries. It still has a pair of pins
sticking out of it. 

A fine effort, as far as ancient
head buns go, but really it was grosser than it was unsettling.
Then the ante was upped.

Museum professionals around the
world responded with a series of esoterica that would make the
creative director for a B-level horror movie jealous: a petrified
sheep’s heart punctuated by nails, a blood-soaked doll with a
missing eye, a severed leg turned into a deformed creature in
desperate need of an orthodontist.  

That was just the beginning.
There’s a smiling executioner’s mask; a decapitated cat plucking a
harp; and a mermaid diorama that will haunt you at a level so
profound that you’ll rue the day you clicked on that dumb Artnet
article.

The friendly competition was
part of the Yorkshire Museum’s weekly #CURATORBATTLE series, which
aims to connect institutions during lockdown. Previous installments
included calls for the dullest, prettiest, and deadliest objects, as well as an Easter-themed search for
the “best
egg.” 

The weeklong competition is just
three days old, but already there’s enough material for several
weeks’ worth nightmares. Here are some of the best (or worst,
depending on your point of view) submissions. 

The post A UK Museum Challenged Bored Curators Worldwide to
Share the Creepiest Objects in Their Collections. Things Got Really
Weird, Fast appeared first on artnet News.

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