MARGATE, England — At the Crab Museum in this coastal city, Tereza Hynkova, 24, stopped in front of a display case and began to laugh.
Inside were models of nine crustaceans, including a coconut crab, a decorator crab, and the gnarly hideous elbow crab. The models were anatomically accurate, but that was where the realism ended. One of the crabs was holding a half liter of beer in its claws. Another grabbed a cricket bat. A third was dressed as a suffragette with a ribbon that said “Votes for Women” on his shell.
A sign above the diorama explained: the species live in different parts of the world, so “it would be misleading to depict them in a realistic natural environment.” Instead, museum staff portrayed them in a 1920s English village.
At a time when museums are struggling with how to attract new audiences, with visitor numbers declining since the pandemic, the silly humor of the Crab Museum, which opened two years ago, is proving to be a hit. It currently attracts around 80,000 visitors a year and recently won an award for its social media presence.
Much of the humor is aimed at young visitors. A section on mating habits features a photograph of crabs in mid-coitus, emblazoned with the word “censored.” To illustrate how animals shed, the museum has a video of Ned Suesat-Williams, one of its founders, struggling to get out of a suit of armor backwards, without using his hands.
The museum also uses crabs as a way to address larger issues, including environmental threats and the inequalities of capitalism and colonialism.
Humor provides “a respite, where you can talk about difficult topics like climate change without visitors thinking the world is about to end,” Suesat-Williams said.
In 2019, Suesat-Williams, 30 years old; her brother Bertie, 33; and his friend Chase Coley, 32, decided to create a museum that could address political issues they cared about while also involving young people. They decided on crabs as the focus of the museum because of Margate's coastal location.
They had no prior experience with museums or crabs, but they devoured books and documentaries about decapods and then developed museum exhibits based on what they found interesting.
A recent visitor, Mia Gregory, 29, said she didn't find a diorama funny because a crab was dressed as a police officer brandishing a baton in its claws. This aggressive portrayal of police felt “a little political” for a museum about crabs, Gregory said. She (she later added that she was a police officer).
But other visitors seemed delighted.
As Jono Twohey, 43, talked about the exhibits, one of his sons, Finn, 9, shouted, “Dad, look at this! It's a crab eye! It's disgusting!”.
By: Alex Marshall
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/7082396, IMPORTING DATE: 2024-01-23 19:22:03
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