Museum Cats Day draws inspired participation from around the world, writes Anand Holla
Cats today are everybody’s darlings, and they are everywhere. It’s raining cats and cats on the Internet – funny cat videos, cute cat pictures, cat memes, cat cartoons – and most of them go viral before you get to wonder who let the cats out.
Why then should museums be left behind? Yesterday, several museums around the world celebrated what is now known as Museum Cats Day. Trending famously through the day with the hashtag #museumcats, the day was dedicated to showcasing, on social networking sites like Twitter and Instagram, cat-related art and artefacts in museums worldwide.
Everybody seemed to have valid excuses to exploit all possible cat puns. A blog named Culture Themes prepared lovers of cats and museums by announcing: Get ready for a CATalog of cats! Another one named Curatorial Cats asked people to join the “twitter litter” and “spread the mews.”
Of course, Doha’s Museum of Islamic Art (MIA) joined in the celebration by tweeting and posting its own enviable feline collection. MIA shared some paw-some works like an illustration of a leaping leopard from the Marvels of Creation & the Oddities of Existence, Yemen, 16th or 17th CE, and a fritware ceramic dish from Turkey with underglaze painting of a chained leopard, dating back to 1600-1610.
The occasion turned out to be a good opportunity to flaunt the range of MIA’s collection. A bronze oil lamp from 12th Century Iran, a bronze tap from 11th Century Egypt, an ewer in the form of a cat on a fritware piece from Iran, circa 1200, a 17th Century bronze ewer from India, a bronze zoomorphic figurine with copper inlay from 12th Century Iran, and a bronze incense burner in the form of a lion from 12th Century Iran or Central Asia, were some of the objects that MIA pitched in with.
Guggeinheim Museum found it to be the “purrrfect day” to post their 1907 “Cat” woodcut by Kandinsky, while the British Museum shared an engraving titled The Large Cat by Cornelis Visscher, one of the most famous of all prints of cats.
There were some bizarre and fascinating shares as well. The Australian Museum, for instance, tweeted, “Paw-don us, but we just had to share this SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope) image of a cat urine crystal.” Pictures of a cat spotted in the gardens of Versailles or of a mummified cat, or facts like cats were first appointed by the British Post Office to catch rodents in 1868, were all over the Twitter universe.
Nobody could beat the king of all things museums and cats – The State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. The museum has a spectacular history of treating cats like treasured guardians, and even today, the army of felines keeps the basement free of mice and rats. To honour them, the museum holds an annual day of the Hermitage cat, and several top cats have been captured in rich photographic portraits wearing the cool attire of imperial court servants.