Sketching at Aarhus Museum of Natural History

I spent Saturday afternoon sketching at Naturhistorisk Museum, the Museum of Natural History, in Aarhus, Denmark.This was in part a scouting mission, since I haven’t been to the museum since my girls were little, and I plan on bringing a group to sketch there in February. The museum has four floors of themed exhibitions, rather than the collections I remember from my childhood visits to the sister museum in Copenhagen. Each method of display has its merits, and while this way is engaging and instructive, the sketcher in me also loves the simple repetitiveness of the collections of insects, shells, etc. with their details and endless variations over a theme.

I brought a pocket accordion sketchbook and spent an hour or so sketching some elements of the exhibitions, starting out with some of the wildlife local to Denmark.

At the entrance, just across from the ticket counter and museum shop, a huge pair of moose on a bed of heather welcome us to the museum.

I got a year’s entry pass and plan on coming back to sketch some of the birds on display, and take a look at the African savannah exhibition downstairs – I didn’t have time to look at all the exhibitions this time around. The top floor was closed, as they are setting up an exhibition centered on the skeleton of a whale that ran aground in Denmark, and will be opening in the summer.

Here is the spread as it looks in the accordion sketchbook:

I expect to fill the entire book with drawings from the museum over the year.

Do you have a museum of natural history in your town?