Theresa Thompson looks at exhibitions of science and the senses

This is a really exciting time for the museum,” said Professor Paul Smith, director of Oxford’s Museum of Natural History.

He was talking about not only the museum being on the Art Fund’s shortlist for the Museum of the Year 2015, but also two new exhibitions they have just launched.

“Biosense is something very different,” he told me. The first in an ambitious series of exhibitions on Contemporary Science & Society, Prof Smith explained, “It’s something I’ve been thinking about since I arrived in Oxford. To bring together the world class research we have in this university, the huge audiences we have in the museum, and the huge team of science educators we have here. It’s a unique opportunity, a unique combination.”

“I also sensed that there was more we could do for adult audiences,” he added. Biosense results from this thinking. A temporary exhibition presenting contemporary science research into the ways different organisms sense their environments., it asks questions like: Could oxygen sensing revolutionise human medical treatment? How does light affect our behaviour? And how do bacteria sense their micro worlds?

Taking a three-fold approach, Biosense looks first at sensing in bacteria, how these most successful organisms move around, adapt, form communities, and so on; then, oxygen and breathing; and light and seeing, namely how our brains use light to regulate circadian rhythms, reset the body clock, and so on. We learn, for example, that our internal clock system has a built-in ‘brake’ (hence, our slow recovery from jetlag), and how the blueish LED light from mobile phones and computers increases alertness and can affect sleep.

“All you see in the exhibition is based on Oxford research,” said science writer Georgina Ferry who worked on the exhibition with designer Claire Venables, also from Oxford. This informative exhibition uses some museum objects, including previously unseen specimens, to make links to the museum’s collection – a grey seal, for instance, to explain how the animal can stay so long underwater without breathing in fresh oxygen, a dormouse to illustrate altered breathing during hibernation, and a stromatolite (early evidence of life on Earth), its layered structure linking it to the biofilm research cited on the nearby display panel. Making direct connections from museum specimens to cutting edge science is, of course, a tough ask. Even so, I’d have liked to have seen the exhibition a little more object led, allowing the museum to highlight more of its marvellous collection.

“I want to take difficult science and make it accessible,” Prof Smith said. It’s a great idea. And it reflects a broad trend to try to bridge the gap between science and the public’s knowledge of it (instance, last month’s ‘Pint of Science’ festival, only two years old yet now running in nine countries and 50 cities including ours; and the successful Cafe Scientifique held monthly in Oxford at OUMNH). Biosense and the second new exhibition, Sensing Evolution will surely encourage visitors to look afresh at objects in the museum as well as reflect on new ideas in science. Future exhibitions include the Ageing Brain, and the People of the British Isles.

Sensing Evolution is a permanent display that builds on the success of the previous touchable tables, which needed replacing having been “loved too much,” said Janet Stott, head of public engagement. But rather than do the same again – as Prof Smith joked, provide “a not very mobile petting zoo”, The new displays encourage visitors to explore the evolutionary adaptations of mammals and reptiles.

“’Please touch’ is a sign you don’t see much in museums,” said Prof Smith. “But with ‘Sensing Evolution’ we want people to touch and at the same time think about evolution.”

The specimens are arranged around circular tables specially made at wheelchair friendly height, Janet told me, and each specimen has a specially commissioned raised image and Braille label to improve accessibility for blind and visually impaired visitors.

In the centre of each table is a creature (a model at any rate) that science agrees to be the common ancestor of mammals and reptiles, respectively. They’ve been given made-up names. The common ancestor of mammals is called Shrewdinger, a name chosen by an American audience in a public poll, but one that confused me a bit at first as unhelpfully I kept thinking of Schrödinger as in cat! Happily, I had no trouble with the common ancestor of reptiles, named ‘Concestor’ by Richard Dawkins and Dr Yan Wong.

Circling these ancestral beasts are some fun things to touch: representing mammals, a hippo’s skull and a Smilodon fatalis (a large sabre-toothed cat) showing off some impressive canines, a badger, an otter etc.; and around Concestor, a jaw of an Ichthyosaur (‘fish lizard’), an Allosaurus skull (‘Big Al’ from Wyoming), a terrapin, and more.

There is also a whizzy new bit of kit. Fresh from the United States where it was ten years in development, led by Harvard scientists – OUMNH is the first UK museum to have it - the ‘Life on Earth’ interactive lets visitors ‘fly’ along branches of the tree of life to see how all the 70,000 different species featured are related. To get us going, the screen asks: How recently did you share an ancestor with a banana? As I find out, it’s 1.4 billion years ago, back to the first cells with nuclei.

The Biosense exhibition is on until 24 August. There are also events like afternoon sessions on some Saturdays where visitors can meet the scientists behind the research.

See www.oum.ox.ac.uk

The Museum of the Year 2015 award will be announced on 1 July. The winner receives £100,000.