A new free exhibition has opened in the Sir Duncan Rice Library at the University of Aberdeen.
The title of the exhibition is “One for Sorrow, Creatures of Fate and Fortune” and will explore ideas of animals as omens. The exhibition has a focus on Scotland and uses the folklore, and beliefs still present in Scottish culture to delve into our relationships with animals and the natural world.
The exhibition will be located in the library atrium by the Café. The exhibition is free to view and accessible during Library opening times; 8 am -10pm weekdays, 9am -10pm Saturdays and 11am -10pm on Sundays. The exhibition will run from the 11th of August until the 28th of November.
This exhibition is the culmination of a project by the MLitt Museum Studies students with the guidance and support of University Collections staff. The students were encouraged to use the University’s Zoological collections; however, the student team comprises of mostly those with artistic and history /social subjects backgrounds. The process of creating the exhibition began with a trip to the University’s Zoology Museum and collections. After this the theme was agreed upon very quickly as was the humanities and cultural approach. The exhibition will use zoological specimens to represent some of the folklore and beliefs associated with animals highlighting how these beliefs continue to be present in our lives and culture.
It was whilst viewing the Zoology collection discussion naturally turned to the students’ personal beliefs around nature and animals. One particular creature sparked this debate: The Magpie. It was evident each person had a belief relating to seeing a Magpie, often meaning luck if you saw a pair of birds. Upon research the deep cultural impact of the Magpie came to light with multiple versions of the “one for sorrow, two for joy” rhyme existing, spanning different time periods.
Student and member of the Interpretation team Sarah Stewart said: “As a History graduate I was used to looking for the human stories, so working with scientific Zoological specimens presented a new challenge. It was my background in History along with some of my team members which led us to look at the human relationships with animals and how we often see them as omens.”
Fellow student and member of the Object Selection team Ross Gray said: “It was thanks to the close work with the University Collections and guidance of the Collections staff that we could build on our initial idea of the Magpie as an omen. Beyond just the Zoology collections the ability to work with the wider collections allowed us to discover the breadth of beliefs relating to animals in Scotland and how these have changed over time.”
Christina Mackenzie, Assistant Curator (Exhibitions) within University Collections said: “It’s been really great to see the students engage with the zoology collections in a different way through this exhibition. We challenged them a bit this year by asking them to explore the zoology collections without them having scientific backgrounds, but they’ve highlighted the collection to tell stories of folklore and social traditions in a really interesting way.”