120 Years in 120 Objects
Join the KwaZulu-Natal Museum in celebrating the museumโs 120th year of orbiting the sun. Staff and guest curators have chosen one object or item per year of our existence to highlight to the public. Visit the website and our social media platforms regularly to see the latest object and keep an eye out for information about a physical exhibition later this year!
Todayโs Object is from 1964
Orphaned but not Forgotten by Matabaro Ziganira, Research Technician, General Collections
As a long-lived research and collections institution, the KwaZulu-Natal Museum has many orphaned collections in the Department of Natural Science. โOrphanedโ simply means that there is no current dedicated specialist curator assigned to oversee the collection. The Arachnida collection, which comprises ticks and mites mounted on slides and complete specimens, among others is one of the most valuable collections in the museum. With more than 3000 specimens, the slide collection presents a rich diversity of localities of southern and eastern Africa as well as Madagascar. Established by Dr Reginald Frederick Lawrence, former Director of the Natal Museum from 1935 to 1964, the slide collection has remained an important tool for research in South Africa serving both academia and primary industry. When collections become orphaned they tend to remain static and do not grow; it is only once a specialist curator is appointed to oversee the collection that new energy is breathed into collecting, researching and exhibiting a collection.
