Museum’s star exhibit is fossil hunter badge, says Beard

MARY BEARD has spurned the British Museum’s treasures and selected a bric-a-brac badge featuring a female geologist as a gem of its collection.

The historian and TV presenter is a new trustee at the London institution and has selected her favourite items from its vast array of artefacts.

Far from the Rosetta Stone or Elgin Marbles, Beard has picked out a tiny pink badge showing fossil hunter Mary Anning as she believes the item shows the history we will all leave behind, not in grand architecture, but in personal items that seem worthless on the surface.

She also hopes to highlight the quiet influence of Anning, who unearthed artefacts on Dorset’s Jurassic Coast, and the often-forgotten work of women in history.

Beard explained her choice, writing: “A reminder here that the museum is not just full of precious, expensive, ancient artefacts. Part of the collection is the revealing bric-a-brac of modern times, the kind of thing that any one of us might have owned, that will become the history of the future.

She added: “I have chosen a souvenir from the Lyme Regis Museum in Dorset, decorated with the figure of local woman Mary Anning. She is one of the many women whose efforts, often unsung, underlie the collections in museums across the world.”

Beard also listed a Nigerian Ife sculpture, saying its reception in the West shines a light on modern debates over supposed cultural superiority and restitution of objects. She also selected a drawing by Michelangelo, a bronze head of Augustus and a preserved piece of Ancient Egyptian cake that first inspired her to learn more about history.