Glucksman Gallery puts zoological curios on display

Walrus tusks, a 19th-century elephant’s tooth and a host of stuffed specimens will form a new exhibition that opens to the public tomorrow at the Lewis Glucksman Gallery at University College Cork.

The Learning Zoo will showcase zoological curios sent to UCC from far-flung places, says senior curator Chris Clarke.

“Researchers and students who were abroad would send these items back to the college so that students could learn from them,” he says. “It’s a collection built up of things like walrus tusks, eggs, insects, skeletons, lots of stuffed animals and there’s an elephant’s tooth labelled as having been gifted to the college in 1850. We are bringing them together for this exhibition.”

Animals are also in the frame in another exhibition at the Glucksman, Fieldworks: Animal Habitats in Contemporary Art, which looks at the manner in which animals live.

“You don’t study animals in isolation,” says Clarke, who worked on the exhibition with researchers from UCC’s school of biological, earth and environmental sciences . “You also look at their habitats and how they are affected by the terrain and their neighbours, and the exhibition explores that from an artistic perspective.”

The Learning Zoo and Fieldworks run until November 2 at the Lewis Glucksman Gallery. Admission free. glucksman.org