The Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities, Fine Art & Natural History

The Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities, Fine Art & Natural History sits in a former call-centre on Mare Street in Hackney, east London. It is run by Viktor Wynd and belongs to The Last Tuesday Society, which raised funds for the project on Kickstarter in 2015. The building once housed rows of telephones; now it holds cabinets of wonders instead. Two floors are filled with objects that defy easy classification, while a bar on the ground floor serves drinks to visitors. The museum’s collections span curiosities, art and natural history, each room organised around a different theme. What makes the journey worthwhile is the sheer variety of items on display. The museum owns the world’s largest publicly shown collection of work by Austin Osman Spare, alongside pieces by Leonora Carrington. Natural history specimens include dodo bones and extinct bird feathers, while medical and scientific instruments line the shelves. Human remains range from shrunken heads to tribal skulls, and the erotic cabinet contains celebrity faecal matter and condoms used by the Rolling Stones. The contents are insured for £1 million, a figure that hints at their rarity and fragility. A visitor finds rooms arranged like a cabinet of curiosities, each wall covered with taxidermy, fossils and tribal art. The Dandy section holds Sebastian Horsley’s nails from his crucifixion and Stephen Tennant’s drawings. Glass jars contain dead babies in bottles and parts of pickled sex workers, while a giant anteater skeleton towers over one corner. Regular exhibitions introduce new artists such as Alasdair Gray and Mervyn Peake. The bar offers a place to sit among the oddities, turning the whole visit into a blend of spectacle and refreshment.