A Royal Irish Academy report calls for investment in the Natural History Museum, writes Dick Ahlstrom
The Natural History Museum on Merrion Square is a rare gem that has been starved of investment and resources since the foundation of the State. Now a new report details just why it is so important and how the priceless collections it contains can be protected.
Earlier this week the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, John O'Donoghue, received a copy of the Royal Irish Academy's report, The National History Museum, Present Status and Future Needs.
While it calls for more investment and a doubling of staff at the museum, one of the report's most important accomplishments is helping people to understand the importance of the wonderful collection maintained by the museum and its diligent staff.
"Every specimen there is irreplaceable," states the chairman of the RIA reporting group, Dr Christopher Moriarty. "The museum is quite as unique as Newgrange."
The retired marine biologist with the Marine Institute, and former chair of the RIA's National Committee for Biology, admits to being "a user of the museum since the age of 10".
The museum struggles along, however, with half the staff it had in the mid-1980s, this despite the continuing growth of its collection and the ongoing need to maintain what it holds while conducting new research.
Yet the place Dubliners affectionately refer to as the "dead zoo" given its collection of deceased fauna of all sorts has carried out its scientific role without interruption over the years, says Moriarty.
"Its condition is incredibly good, considering that it has from its start been understaffed and I think for most of its life been underfunded."
The museum we see today on Merrion Square was opened in 1857. It was purpose-built after a growing natural history collection held at the Royal Dublin Society headquarters in the building which today houses the Oireachtas began taking up too much space.
The look of the place has changed very little since then, except for a re-arrangement of displays carried out in 1910, says Dr Moriarty. The new Free State had few financial resources and the Natural History Museum was given a "low priority" for many years.
The fact that the collection has not deteriorated beyond saving over the past decades was "a tribute to staff there who do fantastic work", he adds.
The report includes a comparative study of similar museums in Norway, Denmark, Northern Ireland and Belgium. "Judged by the study of the museums in countries of similar size and economic output such as Denmark, it is very seriously understaffed," Dr Moriarty says. "We are well below the numbers in other natural history museums."
Financial resources have also been in chronic short supply, but in fact this has worked to the benefit of Dublin's museum, he suggests. "The one good thing that has come from underfunding is it has changed very little from Victorian times. This has made it unique."
It was designed along lines popular at the time with glass and wood cabinets enclosing the displays. Other similar museums have had the resources to tear out these old cabinets in favour of more modern displays, but the museum here hadn't the finance, and so remained as it was.
"It is a museum of a museum and this is of the greatest importance. It should be preserved as it is," says Dr Moriarty.
The report highlights fine points including true to life "reconstructions" of animals in their typical habitat and the exceptional glass models of marine organism made by Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka of Dresden.
Yet lack of funding has allowed some displays to degrade, for example the near white lion that has lost its proper, natural colour over time.
The report calls for funding for the construction of space for lifts, restaurant and shop to the south side of the existing building and for core staff numbers to be doubled.
The museum already attracts more than 135,000 people a year, but its hidden research activities also need State backing, given their importance both at home and internationally. Its catalogued displays can provide valuable information about changes to Irish biodiversity and can yield details about past climate, environment and radiation levels. Some samples can also provide DNA for genetic studies.
The museum's director, Nigel Monaghan, welcomed the report. More staff would provide a better "breadth of expertise" to deliver the services required of it, he said. "It has lived in a time-warp and that is charming for the visitor, but it is less appealing behind the scenes where the research is done."
More resources would deliver more access to the collection, he added. "It is really a case of trying to release its potential."