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 1933
Toy Dinosaur by Inandi Maree, Senior Exhibitions Manager
This small toy Brachiosaurus was donated by Dr Brian Stuckenburg, director of the museum from 1976-1994. The yellow wooden toy was most likely given to him in 1933 as a young boy, around three years of age. He started working at the museum in 1953, becoming the director 23 years later. He became the prime mover behind the creation of the dinosaur gallery. The gallery took several years to design and build. In 1984 the exhibition opened and included several dinosaur casts from the American Museum of Natural History in New York purchased by Stuckenburg. The life-size fossil casts included a skull of a Tyrannosaurus rex, a skull of a Triceratops, and a complete skeleton of a Stegosaurus. He also acquired footprint impressions of a Brachiosaurus and Allosaurus for the gallery. The fossilised footprints of two hopping dinosaurs that were discovered in the 1960s in the Giants Castle area of the ukuHlamba-Drakensberg Mountains. These prints are also on display and are set against a painted scene of the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.
Perhaps it was the gift of this toy at a young age that drove Stuckenburg to install the dinosaur gallery 51 years later, driving the creation of one of the most popular galleries in the museum, magnifying the significance of something so ordinary.
