"Researchers at Work"

The New York Times reviews a new addition to the Darwin Center at the Natural History Museum in London, saying there is "something daring, almost provocative, about the Cocoon." The new exhibition space is, indeed, a cocoon-like structure eight stories tall and, in it, the Times says the museum "humanizes scientific research, stressing that it is an inquiry conducted by curious individuals who undertake strenuous labors before reaching insight." The review adds is taken a bit far and the exhibit becomes "creepy" when the visitors can watch museum researchers at work through a window. The review concludes that "what the Cocoon fully succeeds in doing is teaching us that the collections found in the museum's older halls are themselves reflections of curiosity, compulsion and analysis, that they were laid out because of arguments being made."