How to curate a centaur and other stories of mythmaking in museums

Abstract

<p>A centaur lies dead on the ground, midway through the process of giving birth. Another hangs by his neck. Half horse, half human; half like us, half not. These sculpted characters from myth are rendered so realistically that they fit (un)comfortably among us, their human spectators. Their setting shows signs of who they were: farmers of unfamiliar crops who used tools which seem straight out of science fiction. But they seem to have lived here, in this world, but in a version ever so slightly different to ours and something terrible has happened.</p>