Ten years of the second century

Exclusive items added to the collection over the past ten years are presented by the State Darwin Museum in Moscow for the first time. At the exhibition visitors will see the most interesting new exhibits of the museum and explore the detective mysteries of ancient items, compare the latest achievements of taxidermy with methods of the Victorian era.

The author of an idea to create the first in Russia museum of evolution was Alexander Fedorovich Kohts, a young professor of the higher women’s courses in Moscow. In 110 years the collections passionately developed by the founder of the museum and his wife Nadezhda Ladygina-Kohts have reached the number of 400 000 items. More than 50 000 of objects augmented the entire collection over the past ten years.

New exhibits are accompanied by the ancient masterpieces of taxidermy. For example, the stuffed black mountain hare, the first exhibit of the Darwin museum, an albino Siberian musk deer and a melanistic Eurasian beaver as well as other rare animals present the largest in Russia collection of aberrant animals.

There will be a hollow straw mannequin for visitors to explore the oldest stuffing technique used in the early XIXth century. The stuffed imperial woodpecker from the funds of the Darwin museum was created according to this technique. Comparing two horses of the unique Yakutian breed, you can trace the development of local taxidermy over the last 70 years. Straw, cotton wool and poisonous arsenic were replaced by safe and reliable synthetic materials. There will also be presented a few stuffed bats as an example of new technology developed by the taxidermists of the Darwin museum.  

Ten years is a small term by the museum standards. However many exciting discoveries were made by researchers while studying the scientific collections. These discoveries include a negative made of glass which helped to unveil an old mystery of magnificent antlers (the Russian Royal hunting trophy) and an old ornithological manuscript found in the wooden base of a mounted gorilla.

New remarkable exhibits and unexpected discoveries turn into a captivating story of science and history proving that museum exhibits can surprise the world even after a century and ten years. 

Актуальные мероприятия