Things took a terrifying turn after a museum in northern England challenged rival institutions to tweet photos of the creepiest object in their collections.
Yorkshire Musem’s Twitter account was flooded with unsettling images as the latest edition of its weekly #CuratorBattle hashtag game, which it launched last month amid the coronavirus lockdown, garnered global attention.
It kicked off the April 17 installment of the competition with this picture of a “3rd/4th century hair bun from the burial of a Roman lady, still with the jet pins in place.”
In response, dozens of other museums shared unnerving pictures of children’s toys, dolls, “mermaids” and even a plague mask. See below.
“We are delighted so many museums from all over the world have shared objects to the threads which have become like global exhibitions of remarkable finds,” Lee Clark, a spokesperson for the charitable York Museums Trust that runs the venue, told HuffPost on Friday.
The trust had suffered a 70% loss of income since shuttering its museums during the public health crisis, and the battle was an “interesting and fun” way of teaching people about the objects in its care, he added. Previous battles have centered on the dullest, prettiest and deadliest objects in institutions worldwide.
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