It goes without saying that Europe is a cultural wonderland. A hub bustling with museums and galleries which existed long before most of the United States was even a twinkle in the eyes of our founding fathers. From the Louvre in Paris to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, there’s no shortage of human art and history. But have you ever heard of Dublin’s Dead Zoo?
This morbid little archive, otherwise known as the Irish Natural History Museum, can be found on Merrion Square in the heart of Ireland’s biggest city. Built in 1856, the museum was originally designed to house the Royal Dublin Society’s ever-growing collection of specimens. Today, it’s an extensive assortment consisting of approximately two million specimens, running the gamut from large mammals to tiny insects. Now open to the public, Dublin’s Dead Zoo is visited by nearly 300,000 guests each year, admission-free courtesy of the Irish government.
This ease of accessibility to the museum’s collection, however, hides a miserable reality. Like many other museums and galleries in Dublin, the Natural History Museum has been starved of funding. In fact, the last time the Dead Zoo saw any major renovation to its facilities was back in 1909 when a new entrance was constructed (though I suppose you could count the handicap ramp added in 2010). The museum relies strictly on government aid and visitor donations to survive and so, in essence, it’s become a museum of a museum — a crumbling shell of a once great institution at the mercy of time.
And matters have only gotten worse for the Dead Zoo within the last 10 years. In 2007, a staircase collapse behind the scenes prompted the museum to shut down so that further safety inspections could be held. A general lack of fire escapes, elevators and wheelchair-accessible areas (in addition to other structurally comprised parts of the building) extended this closure but didn’t worry museum staff much. A grant of €15 million was scheduled to pay for renovations, as well as new extension, gift shop and café.
That was until the recession hit, of course.
2008 saw to it that there wasn’t even enough money to keep the museum’s doors open, and for two years Dublin’s Dead Zoo sat dead quiet. Skeletons remained unassembled. Taxidermy was carted off to storage. Specimens were auctioned off and hundreds of thousands of pieces of history were scattered around the world, locked away in private collections. When the Dead Zoo was finally able to reopen its doors in 2010, there were only two curators left to manage the entire building. Renovations were completely forgotten, and the museum’s upper two floors remain closed to this day (although you can still access them via virtual tour).
Of nearly 2 million species owned by the Irish Natural History Museum, a mere 10,000 remain on display. But within the past year, the Dead Zoo has been lucky enough to welcome three educators on board, slowly but steadily growing the museum’s staff and relevance once again. It’s a battle that’s far from over, but one that will hopefully be won. Collections like the one housed in the Dead Zoo are a dying breed, and the world can't afford to lose that many species at once.
