HUM - the Art of Collecting by Julian Klein

A taxomanic course through the research collections of the Museum of Natural History Berlin Collecting and classifying defines the daily routine at the Museum of Natural History. Here, in the non-public research collections, the diversity of nature becomes tangible: Thousands of birds, crabs, spiders, snakes, fossils are being collected, labelled and categorized. Comprising more than 30 million specimens, the Berlin collection is one of the world's largest. HUM – The Art of Collecting, an artistic and documentary portrait of the museum created by and starring its scientists, uses texts, spaces, sounds, objects and scenes to tell of a world contained in shelves and specimen jars, of our human passion for collecting and of the power of our love of order: Taxomania. A course in three acts leads visitors through an enormous labyrinth representing the diversity of nature, simultaneously transforming the halls of the research collections into a labyrinth signifying the utopia of knowledge.