fromThe Art Newspaper - International art news and events
3 weeks agoFrom dangerous erotica to secret smoking canteens: ten things you didn't know about The British Museum
The first giraffes to arrive in London were not live, but stuffed. The first, a young specimen, came in the 1770s and from the 1810s it was dramatically displayed with two others at the top of the stairs of Montagu House, where the museum was then based. The British Museum then also covered natural history, which was later hived off to a separate institution in South Kensington, which opened in 1881.
History