Bureau of the Centre for the Study of Surrealism and its Legacy

Recalling the short-lived ‘Bureau de Recherches Surréalistes of 1924−1925’ − part information centre and ‘public relations’ office, and part surrealist archive − Mark Dion trawled through the Manchester Museum’s own collections and found the raw material for this book and a new installation for the museum. Renowned for his work exploring taxonomy, archaeology, and ecology, Mark Dion documents his opportunistic encounters with the Museum of Manchester’s neglected drawers and overlooked recesses that are home to redundant labels, orphaned mounts, defunct teaching models, botanical freaks, Egyptian fakes, and the minutiae that have fallen through the cracks of museum practice and lain abandoned.