We invite you to State Darwin Museum 02.06.2015 at the exhibition "How to invent a monster"
For visitors the exhibition will be open from 02.06.2015 – 16.08.2015.
Very soon the 200 fictional and real monsters from the collections of the Darwin Museum, the Museum of Oriental Art and the Museum of Biology of Timiryazev will come together on one platform. The exhibition "How to invent a monster" in the Darwin Museum reveals the secret of the birth of King Kong and the Serpent – Dragon, will introduce with monstrous fashion of different nations and will teach to create your own monsters …
If we believe the explanatory dictionaries monsters are all around us – this is the real and fictional creatures causing fear and loathing. Scary characters even became part of the centuries-old folk traditions and heroes of legends, others settled in our minds in the form of phobias, but someone of "monsters" are just "lucky" to be born not like everyone. At the exhibition you will be surrounded of over 200 of monsters, was captured in a painting, drawing, sculpture, exhibits of taxidermy and decorative – applied art, photographs. It turns out that they can inspire poets, writers and artists! Monsters "were born" for a long time as one of the first ways of "psychological relief". Like real creatures, they have their genealogy, change over time. Some even got to the pages of zoological treatises and today, after a century, coexist with giraffes and parrots. Rare tomes of the XVII century from the collections of the Darwin Museum «History of snakes and dragons» of Ulysses Aldrovandi slightly open the secret of "the monstrous evolution."
Among the mythical creatures that live in the depths of the ocean, the depths of the earth and soaring in heaven, you will find the famous dragons and centaurs, griffins, and basilisks, sphinxes, and trolls, as well as those who have not obeyed the Olympus of Fame. You will meet the monster-movie stars and their prototypes, the monsters of Greek mythology and their "colleagues" from medieval bestiaries, ancient monsters of folklore and their successors of today's fantasy. To the monsters is referred not only many creations of the human imagination, but also notorious animals. Spiders and toads, octopuses and snails, crocodiles and hyenas, pythons and bats by their unattractive appearance and intimidating human habits gave rise to many superstitions and still evoke fears. You'll learn why Charles Darwin awarded marine iguana unkind epithet "monster", how "came under hot hand" of Alfred Bram warthog, who feared the German poet Johann Friedrich von Schiller, and how bats portraits adorned book of Ernst Haeckel "Beauty of forms in nature." The exhibition is accompanied by an interactive educational program for children and adults. You will be able to take part in the voting contest "Monstrous beauty", literary and cinematic quiz and inspired by monstrous examples to come up the name and shape of a monster.
