This year’s Royal Academy Summer Exhibition opens to the public on the 21st June which Níall has co-curated with artist Rana Begum two rooms of art and architecture. Our practice has been been extremely delighted to have had this opportunity and assisting with assembling and the intall of some of the pieces, from Boomserm Premthada’s elephant dung brick to a full size Khudu Bari flood shelter in Bangladesh by Marina Tabassum.
Below are some from the Natural History Museum site showing the scaffold ‘tunnel’ going up at the Museum. This is the framework required to lift, manipulate, and move the blue whale skull into position in a few weeks.
Though the main hall has had a sperm whale in it before, this was only around 15m long. In contrast, the blue whale, the largest known animal to have ever existed, is about 30m long once assembled.
Unfortunately, due to the various extensions and alterations to the Museum over time, the skull can only come in via the front doors. And – much like a very large, very heavy, very valuable sofa – it’s a case of squeezing it in at strange angles.