The Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi is offering a sneak peek into its collection this weekend, presenting stunning specimens that include a fragment from the largest meteorite shower in human history.
The museum has set up an exhibition space at The Arts Centre at NYU Abu Dhabi as part of the Al Sidr Environmental Film Festival, which is running at the venue until Sunday.
With just a dozen pieces on view, the exhibition is by no means a comprehensive look into the collection of the Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi, which is currently under construction at the the Saadiyat Cultural District.
Rather, it is a representation of the museum’s focus and the span of time its collection represents.
“The exhibition starts with really old meteorites going all the way to extant species, species that are still with us, but also includes a lot of extinct species,” says Brigitte Howarth, curator at the Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi.
Pieces on display include a specimen from the Sikhote-Alin meteorite, which fell in the mountains of southeastern Russia in February 1947. Fragments cumulatively weighing 23 tonnes fell in the area, making it the largest recorded meteorite shower in human history.
Another fascinating meteorite on display is Northwest Africa 13974, or NWA 13974 for short, which is distinct for originating from the Moon. Its mineral composition offers a record of several asteroid and comet impacts on the lunar surface. The meteorite was found in northwest Africa in 2021, along with other pieces that total almost 8kg.
While NWA 13974 offers clues about the Moon’s history, a fossil of fish gives an insignt into life in the Levant 100 million years ago.
The fish, armigatus brevissimus, doesn’t seem as foreign as its age suggests. The fossil, which is from Hakel, near Byblos, Lebanon, has an outline and features that resemble modern-day sardines and herrings.
Another fossil being exhibited, meanwhile, is that of an immaculately-preserved crane fly, one of the oldest known groups of flies. The fossil is dated at 50 million-years-old and was discovered in Utah, USA.
Other pieces on display include a precious opal stone, which has been exhibited to show its ability to diffract or bend light. The sediments that surround the opal were once part of the ancient inland sea that covered most of Australia during the Cretaceous period. The sediments combined into rocks in a process that took millions of years.
The exhibition also includes photographs of fossils taken by Marc McAlester, a photographer who has worked for the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi. “He's excellent artist,” Howarth says. “You can see the detail on the crinoid slab at the back. It’s very difficult to photograph some of these fossils because of the colour.”
Howarth says she hopes the exhibition gives visitors a sense of what to expect at the Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi. “Be prepared to be blown away,” she says. “What is very important for our museum is that we are an international museum, but with an Arabian lens. It's very important for us to showcase the extraordinary biodiversity of the Middle East, and that will happen within the museum, and it also is here a little bit with one or two objects.”
Local biodiversity is being represented at the exhibition at NYU Abu Dhabi through models of several animals, including a skull of a red fox, which is one of a few native species of foxes found in the UAE, as well as a taxidermy of an Indian Roller bird, known for its dazzling colours.
Howarth says it seemed fitting to offer a glimpse of the museum’s collection during Al Sidr Environmental Film Festival. Much like the festival, which is being held under the theme All Living Beings, the museum will also strive to show the interconnectedness of life on the planet.
“It's really nice to let people know that Abu Dhabi is going to be opening a natural history museum,” she says. “We are very concerned about the future of our planet, and there is no better way than to celebrate life and to celebrate diversity.”
While the exhibition by Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi offers a scientific lens through which through view other life forms, an adjacent exhibition, also taking place as part of the festival, aims to do the same but with a touch of humor and levity.
Conservatory for Plants with Obesity by Camilla Singh features more than two dozen plants of various shapes and sizes huddled together. The plants have been fitted with globules made from clay and other materials. At times, visitors will find faces peeking back at them from beyond the leaves, arranged from dried blossoms and stems.
The space, Singh says, aims to prompt visitors to consider how we communicate with plants, or rather how plants communicate with us. “We're always in exchange with plants, what what we breathe and what they take in, and what they give us,” she says, adding that she sees Conservatory for Plants with Obesity as a story that she is still exploring.
“I grew up in Canada and the First Nations cultures there have a very clear understanding, I think, about interspecies communication,” she says. “Our pharmaceuticals and different things originate from being able to understand the forest. There are different ways of understanding how that happened, and it is a direct communication.”
Plants and other flora, she says, “don't grow a mouth and start talking to you. You have to be you have to be looking, listening and perceiving differently. You have to be open.”
Both the Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi exhibition and Conservatory for Plants with Obesity are running at Al Sidr Environmental Film Festival until Sunday
