Refreshing the Victorian Period Rooms
Recent visitors to the Museum may have noticed real people in the Victorian period room displays supplementing the usual mannequins. A number of visitors got quite a fright! Inandi Maree from the Exhibitions Department and Dr Ghilraen Laue, Curator in the Human Sciences Department, have been refreshing the displays in these period rooms. There are multiple challenges to updating the exhibits in these rooms. In the Apothecary Shop, for example, there are original medicine bottles, many of which are over 100 years old. Some of these bottles still have their original contents, including arsenic and other poisons! For safety, face masks are worn while in this room when bottles and cabinets are opened. In the coming weeks similar work will be done in the Blacksmith and Wainwright displays.
