There was a door in the old museum in Dublin which I hungered to see opened, a massive mahogany affair with a brass handle. Being small at the time, I remember it as about 40 feet tall, with a lock placed some ten feet over my head. Alice clutching her Drink Me bottle never longed as passionately to get through a door.
What wonders lay beyond? Gold? Skeletons? Dolls' houses? Golden dolls' houses full of skeletons? Once as I stood by a dull carved stone slab, those hinges creaked, the handle turned, and a man in uniform came out and locked it firmly behind him, allowing just the faintest glimpse of the tall shadowy glass cases within.
The Pitt Rivers instantly struck me as exactly the space I imagined lying beyond that door, where every case held a mystery. I rushed nervously to check when it reopened, and though slightly disappointed that it's no longer quite dark enough to tumble down the stairs into a black pit, I was thrilled that the labels are still completely illegible, even by the light of the smart clockwork torches.
Richard Fortey's book Dry Store Room No. 1 described the Natural History Museum as just such a Gormenghast castle of mysteries, of secret passageways and spiral staircases and dead ends, almost as baffling - and enthralling - to staff as to visitors.
Well, there ain't no shadowy doorways in the Darwin Centre. Indeed museum director Michael Dixon described the great white airship tethered in its shining glass hangar as "bringing into the open activities which historically happened behind closed doors".
Humph. It's beautiful as a sculpture, and clear as a glass of water. The displays answer every conceivable question, and if a wisp of doubt remains a volunteer will certainly pop up at your elbow and dispel it. It's about as mysterious as a sock drawer.
When the door in Dublin finally opened, it disclosed a rather dull ethnography collection. I seem to remember quite a lot of snowshoes, rather the worse for wear. Some mysteries strike sparks in the imagination that can light up a lifetime: they are better never revealed.
What wonders lay beyond? Gold? Skeletons? Dolls' houses? Golden dolls' houses full of skeletons? Once as I stood by a dull carved stone slab, those hinges creaked, the handle turned, and a man in uniform came out and locked it firmly behind him, allowing just the faintest glimpse of the tall shadowy glass cases within.
The Pitt Rivers instantly struck me as exactly the space I imagined lying beyond that door, where every case held a mystery. I rushed nervously to check when it reopened, and though slightly disappointed that it's no longer quite dark enough to tumble down the stairs into a black pit, I was thrilled that the labels are still completely illegible, even by the light of the smart clockwork torches.
Richard Fortey's book Dry Store Room No. 1 described the Natural History Museum as just such a Gormenghast castle of mysteries, of secret passageways and spiral staircases and dead ends, almost as baffling - and enthralling - to staff as to visitors.
Well, there ain't no shadowy doorways in the Darwin Centre. Indeed museum director Michael Dixon described the great white airship tethered in its shining glass hangar as "bringing into the open activities which historically happened behind closed doors".
Humph. It's beautiful as a sculpture, and clear as a glass of water. The displays answer every conceivable question, and if a wisp of doubt remains a volunteer will certainly pop up at your elbow and dispel it. It's about as mysterious as a sock drawer.
When the door in Dublin finally opened, it disclosed a rather dull ethnography collection. I seem to remember quite a lot of snowshoes, rather the worse for wear. Some mysteries strike sparks in the imagination that can light up a lifetime: they are better never revealed.
