Lapworth Museum of Geology, University of Birmingham - Museums Association

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Lapworth Museum of Geology, University of Birmingham

Matt Williams finds interactive technology being used to superb effect to bring this fine collection of fossils to life and expand its public reach
Matt Williams
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Birmingham’s Lapworth Museum of Geology is well known among academics and curators for its excellent collections. Now the venue has been redeveloped, it looks sure to secure the affection of the public too.

Charles Lapworth (1842-1920) was a notable geologist who pioneered techniques in correlating rock strata and recognised a new division of geological time, naming it the Ordovician. He introduced the use of graptolites (marine colonial hemichordate animals) as index fossils, resulting in scientists being able to apply relative ages to rocks by the presence or absence of certain species.

In 1881, Lapworth became the first professor of geology at Mason Science College, which later became the University of Birmingham.

The museum that now bears his name retains its place as an integral part of the university’s School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences. More than 50% of the university’s geology modules still use the museum’s collection for teaching. It also provides a free public service seven days a week; in this time of local authority cuts in heritage funding it is heartening to see university museums thriving and expanding.

The museum is on the Edgbaston campus in the Aston Webb building, a grand red-brick, lead-roofed Edwardian construction. The main gallery, which in the 1900s was the engineering department’s “hall of machines”, retains its industrial character, with riveted iron girders, large radius windows, and parquet flooring. The museum’s recent redevelopment has been sensitive to the historical value of not just the architecture, but also the furniture. While the cases around the walls are of laminated glass and brushed aluminium, those in the centre of the main room are Victorian oak, retrofitted with new glass and LED strips.

History lesson

Before going into the galleries I visited the well resourced and nicely designed education room, featuring handling specimens, microscopes, flatscreen monitor, projector and 3D printer. Inspirational quotations from great geologists, biologists and poets are colourfully printed on the walls. The museum is doing its best to follow Charles Darwin’s commandment to “make them, like me, adorers of the good science of rock-breaking”. I was told that since the museum reopened in October 2016, more than 1,500 children have used its resources, which are offered free to primary schools.
 
The exhibitions are divided into three sections: the main space tackles Evolution of Life, while the newly extended galleries are themed Active Earth and Mineral Wealth. The Evolution of Life section is structured around the chronostratigraphic sequence (the study of the age of rock strata in relation to time), moving forward from the Precambrian, era, with each geological period given its own display.

The displays are coded by colour and relate back to a well-designed introductory graphic. The interpretation is pleasingly multi-tiered, so there should be something of interest for every level of geology enthusiast. Scientific Latin names (binomials) and accession numbers are present with every specimen, in recognition of the continuing academic role of the collection. The occasional missing specimen with an object removal slip in its place is a further sign that the collection is an active research resource.

Naturally, there is a bias towards the best-represented parts of the collection, which in turn relate to the predominant regional geology. As a result, the Silurian is given heavy weighting, with excellent fossils from the Wenlock limestone of Shropshire and the Black Country.

Opportunities to discuss the history of geology are not missed, so Lapworth’s naming of the Ordovician introduces that period. And in the section on the Carboniferous era I learned that the extraction of fossil-bearing nodules from mined material was undertaken by women known in the local vernacular as “pit bonk wenches”. A reconstructed desk below an oil painting of Lapworth, features an assortment of artefacts including a graptolite microscope made to his own design, slides, geological hammer and a photograph of his colleague and fellow graptolite specialist Ethel Wood.

The interpretation poses and answers questions, such as “would you destroy a fossil for science?” when talking about taking samples for scientific examination. It is good to see a small section on how the collection is used now and how it developed through its history. Equally, a section incorporating zoological specimens to illustrate a modern tree of life is an effective way of demonstrating the present outcome of hundreds of millions of years of evolution.

Mounted casts of Allosaurus, a meat-eating bipedal dinosaur, and Pteranodon, a flying cousin of the dinosaur, did nothing for me, but one can forgive a little popularism if it is likely to enthuse a younger generation. I would have preferred to see a cast of a British dinosaur fossil, such as Baryonyx or Neovenator (both bipedal carnivores), but I am probably being too picky.

Groundbreaking interactives

Passing by a ceiling-height rock wall (with 125 specimens, this is an impressive way to display objects that are notoriously tricky to make exciting), one comes to a smaller gallery titled Active Earth. A large interactive globe caught my attention and I spent a long time using a touchscreen interface to overlay various animated infographics onto the sphere, including a 600 million-year time-lapse of Palaeogeographic change (the shifting of continents), a year’s temperature variation in colourful gradations, and the circulation patterns of the world’s oceans. It was intuitive, engaging and superbly thought through, as was a video microscope where one could manipulate and examine various microfossils and relate them to our understanding of environmental changes over time.

The video screens in the first gallery had left me underwhelmed, but these two excellent pieces of interactive technology should delight even the most jaded museum traditionalist. The exhibits themselves deal with interesting themes such as glaciation, natural disasters and speleothem (cave calcite) formation.

The mezzanine floor gallery, Mineral Wealth, begins with a large case in which the specimens are arranged not by chemical system or crystal structure, but by colour, recognition that for many it is the aesthetic wonder of these items that is the chief interest. They are, from both an aesthetic and scientific perspective, an impressive group of objects.

The gallery also explores the economic importance of mineral resources, with case studies of Shropshire lead mining, Cumbrian iron and British fluorite. The differentiation of minerals by crystal form, hardness and density are not neglected either, and some history of the collection is also explored.

It is clear that the Lapworth Museum of Geology is better than ever, and the people of Birmingham are fortunate to have this inspirational free resource available to them. One hopes that the quote from Victorian geologist Gideon Mantell, printed on the stairwell wall, will be realised in the lives of many visitors: “There is no picking up a pebble by the brookside without finding all nature in connexion with it.”

Matt Williams is the collections manager at Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution
Project data
Cost £2.7m
Main funders Heritage Lottery Fund; DCMS/Wolfson; Arts Council England; University of Birmingham Circles of Influence fundraising campaign
Architect Associated Architects
Exhibition design Real Studios
Animations Squint/Opera
Graphic design Surface 3
Display cases ClickNetherfield
Installation The Hub
Contractors A&H Construction
Lighting DHA Designs
New museum stores Bruynzeel Storage Systems
Admission Free

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