‘Fantastic Beasts: The Wonder of Nature!’ at the Natural History Museum

So, unless you’ve been living under a rock since the nineties, then you’ll know that Harry Potter is a big thing. It has spawned seven best selling books, eight films, a West End hit play about the later life of the trio and two spin off films based on the travels of Newt Scamander. Today we’ll be talking about the later: Newt Scamander and his Fantastic Beasts. Honestly when you thought the wizarding world couldn’t get any better and more magical than it already is, BOOOM Fantastic Beasts comes around. All these magical creatures are based on mythologies and stories from all over the globe. J.K. Rowling did her research and so did the curatorial team behind the ‘Fantastic Beats: The Wonder of Nature’ Exhibition at the Natural History Museum in London.

So, I went along with a very good friend of mine, it was semi catch up/ semi lets see something cool together and we both like Harry Potter, so it was all good. Walking in to the exhibition you are instantly shown movie memorabilia and props, so in this case the costume for Newt Scamander and his suitcase with all his books etc which was super cool to see up close, we then dive deep into the world of natural history, we are confronted by ferocious dinosaur skeletons and how they had previously inspired our ideas about dragons. The exhibit includes book from people who had claimed to have seen dragons, mermaids, unicorns etc. 

One of my favourites parts of the exhibition was the section about mermaids and mer-peoples. What’s incredible is that this exhibition points out that these ideas of mer-people or sirens were widespread from the selkie’s in Scotland to the Sirens of Ancient Greece. There were also plausible explanations of what the sailors were actually seeing. They were usually Manatees (haha). Fine that may explain the sight, but not the sound of mermaids. Remember in the Odyssey, Circe gave Odysseus and his men beeswax so that they could safely pass by the sirens without meeting their deaths. Odysseus, out of curiosity (or sheer folly) asked his men to tie him to a post so he could hear the sirens song. So what were the options for this, well seals were pretty high on the list as were humpback whales. Okay, whale song is charming and soothing but, to be honest, it wouldn’t make me want to literally jump ship. So its questionable. But what’s curious about Mermaids, is the number of hoaxes that appeared in the 17/18/19the centuries about people who really had seen them and had even brought back specimens. Okay so with x-ray technology it was very easy to see how it was a hoax, also the one that the exhibition had on display was the stuff of nightmares. It was creepy, fascinating, but creepy.

Like I said, royally creepy

The next part of the exhibit focused on the findings of magical creatures from the film. We follow Newt all over the world from Englands Niflers to Bowtruckles that guard magical trees to the Occamy. If you remember from the film, an Occamy follows a cockroach into a teapot. There are maps everywhere detailing where Newt has been and the creatures that he found there. It charming and well thought through, we meet several other unusual animals from the film and their parallels in really life such as stick insects next to Bowtruckles. It was really rather charming. I must say, my only criticism of the exhibition is that, for the magical creatures, it relies far too much on VR an projections to be really interesting. This exhibition is clearly meant for those with families, children as well as adults who are interested in the natural world. It was just missing that little extra bot of sparkle to really elevate this exhibition to where it should be.

One of the main themes from the Fantastic Beats franchise is the focus on magical creatures that are vastly understood, and indeed many animals around the world are still misunderstood. It takes patience time and effort in order to understand the natural world. This exhibition is all about storytelling. The Wizarding World is the obvious draw here, but it’s the story of how we came to understand the world around us is where the exhibition finds its meaning.