Museum, meet Steampunk
A mechanical bird (above) and a steam-powered wheelchair (below) at the museum ••• Paola Tolentino / Dalhousie Gazette
Right in time for Halloween and Hal-Con, the Nova Scotia Museum of Natural History and the Jules Verne Society for the Phantastical have set up a temporary exhibit that showcases Steampunk subculture.
Steampunk is, essentially, “What would have happened if we had never stopped using steam power technology”, which leads to a lot of intricate designs involving gears and 20th Century aesthetics. It’s about redesigning and repurposing, so that you end up with great costumes such as an early-industrial Green Lantern costume, or a wheelchair made with real 18th Century wheels.
The exhibition also features detailed explanations on Steampunk genres, literature, games and props. Most of the items have been handmade, and were curated and set up for display by the Jules Verne Society after being approached by the museum.
The exhibit is a part of the museum’s aim to appeal to a wider audience, as well as to collaborate with new partners.
“In the end, the museum doesn’t really belong to us. It belongs to the people,” says Jeff Gray, curator at the Nova Scotia Museum of Natural History. He’s very pleased about the partners for this exhibit. “It was great working with [The Jules Verne Society]…They knew a lot about the museum and they curated everything themselves. Most of the reviews have been overwhelmingly positive, especially from the steampunk community, although some people are initially confused. Gray, however, likes the idea that the museum has the chance to educate people about this contemporary sub-culture, rather than something which happened long ago. It makes the museum more interactive and diverse. An exhibit like this is also not something completely unprecedented, as the museum also features a small Batman exhibit and an exhibit on the film “Creature from the Black Lagoon”.
The exhibit is running until January, when it will be replaced by a dinosaur exhibit.
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