Future Nature

Karl Grimes, School of Communications, has had his documentary exhibition project, Future Nature, acquired for permanent display by the Museum für Naturkunde (Museum of Natural History) in Berlin. The exhibition is based on the unique collections of embryological specimens of vertebrate species at the Hubrecht Laboratory in Utrecht and the Tornblad Institute in Lund. The acquisition follows its exhibitions in Ireland, United States, New Zealand and China. 

The collections documented are among the largest and most scientifically valuable non-human embryo depositories in the world. They were largely assembled in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by zoologist Ambrosius Arnold Willem Hubrecht (1853–1915) in Utrecht and by physician Ivar Broman (1868–1946) in Lund. In 2010, both collections were transferred to the Museum für Naturkunde to a new state-of-the-art building for zoological wet collections.

Future Nature, consisting of large scale photographs, image light boxes, videos and sound works, will also travel on loan to Utrecht in 2016 as part of the celebrations to mark the 100th anniversary of the Hubrecht Institute (Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences). The project was funded by Diageo Ireland and the Arts Council of Ireland.