naturhistorisches museum wien

I could have easily spent every hour of every day of my trip to Vienna sketching in the Naturhistorisches Museum. Oh what a marvellous place! If you need photographic proof of its wondrousness, click here.

oh the many marvellous things

What a delight to find this sketch of a future exhibit taped up in a vitrine!
Reminds me of someone...

hello, venus

The auditorium was dark, and the white-headed professor was droning on and on about something my sleep deprived brain struggled to retain. I hung my head back to stare at the ceiling, trying to recall the bizarre dream I started to have last night, when my thought, like the dream, was interrupted. The slide had clicked to reveal a wonderfully rounded form— the very definition of round. A woman, head bowed, with enormous, pendulous breasts resting on a pillow of belly and hip. I was mesmerised.

The Venus of Willendorf.

I was obsessed. I drew her thighs and rolls in the corners of my art history and philosophy papers. I memorised her curves. This 25,000 year old Paleolithic statuette enchanted me. I daydreamed of the moment she was discovered in the earth, of her voluptuous little body being carved by ancient hands and gazed upon by ancient eyes... and I dreamt of tracing the shapes of her shadows with my own eyes.

Fifteen years later, I found myself standing before her, breath stilled in my body.
I pulled out my sketchbook and pen, and drew by the light which bounced off her breasts.



I am so lucky, indeed.

oh my thunderous heart!

Why on earth I did not spend every single day wandering through the ornate halls of Vienna's Naturhistorisches Museum is beyond me. It stands alongside The de Young in San Francisco, the Isabella Stewart Gardner in Boston, and the Nationalmuseet in Copenhagen, as one of my favourite museums. Oh wait— there is the Van Gogh Museum and...

But let's get back to Vienna. My goodness... this gem has everything a girl could want in a museum! Light! Elegant, gilded moulding! Fossils! Meteorites! Dinosaurs!



And then, there was the bird room...



Just look at all those corvids!



Can you believe such beings exist? I spent over two and a half hours sketching and gawking wide-eyed at everything within my sight. I was in love with the birds— to see elegant, feathered creatures I've only dreamed of (though stuffed), was such a thrill— to be able now, to better understand their size, colour and shapes...

But there was one thing— one little thing, which made my heart roar with excitement...
She deserves a post of her own.