Bristol Museum & Art Gallery
The museum made a good impression on me right from the start – there is a replica Bristol Boxkite (a biplane) hanging from the ceiling in the entrance hall! Having said that, the main attractions for the science-oriented here are in the fields of wildlife and fossils. The museum is very traditional – there are a few places with small tables and colouring equipment to keep small visitors occupied, but very few displays that involve interaction. In my mind this was quite a good thing – too many such displays just have children pushing/pulling to see what happens, with no effort to understand what the activity is supposed to be showing.
Wildlife
The displays of wildlife are split between two galleries – the Bristol and South West Wildlife gallery on the ground floor, and the Wildlife galleries on the second floor. A large part of both of these exhibitions consists of stuffed birds and mammals. A notice makes it clear that the specimens were donated from old collections or have been made from animals that died at the Bristol Zoo (saying, I suppose, that no animals have recently been harmed in the making of the displays).
I am not generally fond of stuffed creatures, but I found some of the specimens gave me a better idea of the size of some birds and animals. I have only seen birds such as dunlin and sandpipers through binoculars, when it can be difficult to judge their size, and I was surprised to see how small they were. Similarly with the platypus – I have only seen these in wildlife documentaries, and again was surprised to see how small the specimen was.
There are a range of different creatures, and parts of the display mention extinctions and the need for preserving biodiversity, but there is little attempt to relate animals to their habitats, geographical range, etc.
Sea Dragons
I almost didn't visit this small gallery, because I assumed it was part of the 'arty' part of the museum. However the 'sea dragons' are ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs and pliosaurs, and the gallery contains several fossils of each of these (including one ichthyosaur with a tiny embryo also fossilised).
Minerals and Geology
The mineral collection is just a fairly small collection of various minerals – a few interesting ones. The geology display is almost all fossils (rather than, say, explaining plate tectonics or rock types). It is organised by geological periods, and is best entered from the minerals end. If you enter from the other end it is worth walking along to the minerals so you can start at the Precambrian. Each period is arranged in one (or sometimes two) cases, with examples of fossils, a painted backdrop depicting the likely scenery at the time, and some models and drawings of what the complete creatures may have looked like. Labels explain briefly where the UK was at the time, and what the backdrops represent. I thought it was well done, in a straightforward way.
Wildlife Photographer of the Year
This was a temporary exhibition (running from February to June) that I think is hosted by the museum every year before moving to the Natural History Museum in London. The images were excellent – variously beautiful, entertaining, interesting and shocking. Well worth seeing, either here or in London.
Verdict:an interesting place to spend a couple of hours if you are in Bristol, but probably not worth going out of your way to see.
