There is a jar of moles just near Euston.
Moles – plural. Yes, the animal that digs under your lawn.
They’re suspended in fluid, preserved in the way that only the Victorians had the derangement to think was a good idea.
It is the star attraction of the Grant Museum of Zoology, and it is exactly as strange as it sounds. But on the day we were there, it was elsewhere.
No matter. Strange is in the eye of the beholder, and my son found other obsessions: a Kiwi skeleton, a pickled armadillo, and then an Iguanadon bone.
Each time my son was confused, thrilled and unable to look away.
Which, if you think about it, is the highest compliment you can pay anything. A seven-year old’s attention is a fickle thing.
The Grant Museum at UCL
The Grant Museum is not large. It is not well promoted. It does not have a blue whale hanging from the ceiling or a gift shop selling cuddly dinosaurs. In fact, the gift shop is one end of the reception desk.
What the museum does have is a single room, floor to ceiling with Victorian specimen cases, and the absolute conviction that this is enough.
It makes no attempt to be for everyone, it makes you feel extraordinary for knowing it exists. It’s a place that has never once tried to sand down its edges.
Don’t sand your edges
Most businesses do the opposite of the Grant Museum. They look at what they are, and then they look at what they think, not know, what people want, and then they start editing.
The weird stuff goes first. Then the niche stuff. Then the things that feel too specific.
They curate themselves into something normal. Something boring. Something without Victorian jars.
And then they wonder why nobody feels anything when they find them.
The Grant Museum has jars of animals, and all their other weirdness, because the Grant Museum is the kind of place that has jars of animals… and all their other weirdness.
To thyself, be known.
When you know completely what you are, the right people find you and feel like insiders when they do.
They tell other people, not because you asked them to, not because there was a referral incentive, but because they want to be the person who knows about the weird thing in the cabinet.
I didn’t find the Grant Museum through an ad. I found it because someone told me about it with the particular energy people reserve for things they feel they’ve earned.
And now I’m doing the same thing. That seems to be their entire marketing department.
The businesses I admire most have this quality.
They have something in their jar that confuses people at first. A payment policy that sounds unusual. A roadside diner that feels fresh from the 70s.
They don’t apologise for it. They don’t bury it on page four of the about section. They put it in the window.
My son will remember the weird stuff in the room that smelled slightly of something old. The place in the building you had to look for.
Stop curating. Put the jars in the window.
