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The Beaty Biodiversity Museum is Vancouver’s natural history museum. We work to promote a greater understanding of, and collective responsibility for, the biodiversity of BC, Canada, and the World. Come visit us on UBC campus - we’re located at 2212 Main Mall, Vancouver, BC. You can find more info at beatymuseum.ubc.ca. Follow us @beatymuseum on Twitter & Instagram and like us on Facebook. |
Aislinn Hunter, Writer-in-Residence at the Beaty Biodiversity Museum.
For the past week I’ve been playing with dead things. On Tuesday it was a hummingbird, on Wednesday a stuffed emperor penguin that Chris, the Curatorial Assistant at the Beaty Biodiversity Museum where I am currently writer-in-residence, placed awkwardly in my arms. I carried him over to my desk in order to study him for a poem, and over the course of the day lots of people stopped by to marvel at him.
What’s amazing about the emperor penguin and so many of the Beaty Museum’s two million-strong collection is the sense that the specimens and objects within it are still so vital; that every thing you see has a story to tell.
Some of the objects in the the Beaty Biodiversity Museum, the “breathless museum.”
As part of my residency I am hosting an evening that celebrates museums and the objects in their keeping. I Came To See The Beautiful Things is about how museums inspire artists and why museums still matter in the digital age. The amazing (and award-winning) singer-songwriter Veda Hille will play a few songs, I will do a short reading, and then Jillian Povarchook from the Museum of Vancouver will join us for a lively discussion about turning to museum collections for inspiration. Join us under the whale skeleton for a great night, survey the collection before we start and bring your own museum stories.
Friday November 14, 7:00-8:30PM
Beaty Biodviersity Museum
2212 Main Mall, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4
Free to the public.
Wine and cheese to follow.
Aislinn Hunter is an award-winning author of six books. The Globe and Mail called her new novel The World Before Us (Doubleday) 'the sort of novel which forces you to look at the world - the people around you, the objects they hold dear - in a different light.'
Veda Hille is a critically acclaimed singer, songwriter, and musician with thirteen albums. The Georgia Straight has written that 'Few musicians and lyricists, no matter the genre, have such a vibrant array of skills.' She often writes about the things that amaze her.
Jillian Povarchook is a Collections Associate at the Museum of Vancouver. Outside of helping to care for and record the lives of the over 70,000 artifacts in the MOV's collection, she is an amateur cataloguer of the feelings provoked by objects in our domestic spaces.
