Battle of the bums: Museums raise cheeky smile as they compete for title of the best behinds as visitor numbers plummet during pandemic

It’s a museum publicity stunt that could prompt accusations of being a ‘race to the bottom’.
Curators around the world are competing for the title of ‘Best Museum Bum’ as part of a social media challenge started by the Yorkshire Museum to provide some fun after visitor numbers plummeted during the pandemic.
Twitter has since been flooded with contributions from some of the world’s greatest cultural institutions, from the Louvre’s statue of the Greek God Hermaphroditos to an extra-large coat of armour that once housed Henry VIII’s growing behind.
The Yorkshire Museum, which has been shut since March and is raising funds to ensure it can reopen, launched the initiative under the hashtag #BestMuseumBum, kicking off the contest with its own ‘cracking statue of a Roman athlete’.
From the Ota Memorial Museum of Art in Tokoyo came a swaggering sumo wrestler, while the Museum of Oxford revealed a statue of a medieval woman whose rear had been flattened by centuries of touching.
The York Art Gallery had one more the more eclectic contributions, suggesting the rear end of a drunken fish made by the artist Pamela Mei Yee Leung, who created mythological creatures marrying animals and humans together.
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Source: Daily Mail
Original publication 23 July, 2020
Posted on NatCorn 15th August 2020
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