Treasured! Smuggled, Stolen, Saved?

Have been back at the Leeds Museum again, visiting the exhibition;

"Treasured! Smuggled, Stolen, Saved? is a free exhibition at Leeds City Museum displaying a number objects that have never been on public show. The exhibition explores the unusual, and often exciting, journeys that objects undergo before ending up in museum collections"

It's certainly a varied collection of objects, and I was tempted into sketching a couple.

This is a sketch of an actual shrunken human head from Ecuador. Whilst drawing there was a video playing next to me explaining the museum's authentication process for this object, and the apparent popularity of these as souvenirs in the Victorian period! When the curator clip finished it changed to a short animated film explaining how the heads were shrunk. It began, after a pause from the last film, with a loud 'hey, you!' - I was so deep in concentration drawing that it made me jump out of my skin.

My second sketch was of the skull of the gorilla 'Mok'

 

 

Mok arrived in London Zoo from Paris in 1932. In Paris he had spent time in the lobby of a hotel as entertainment for guests. When Mok moved to the zoo he fell in love with Moena. Six years after arriving in London Mok suddenly died. Moena was so heartbroken she scratched her feet in grief and died from infections in the cuts.

 

I'm not sure what it says about me that I found the gorilla story heartbreaking yet felt  no emotion about the shrunken head (other than thinking all that boiling sure makes the hair really shiny).