The Curious Collection of Professor Rufus Excalibur Bell

Open to the Public through 2011

Enter the Higgins’ Department of Curiosities headed by Professor Rufus Excalibur Bell – a professor who has been studying the creatures of mythology for decades, but has been missing for almost as long. Look through the artifacts, specimens, and equipment that the professor sends back in mysteriously marked crates and cases. Discover where the professor must have traveled in order to unearth such items as a Yeti, a Gargoyle skeleton, and the Argonaut probe. Examine the equipment he has sent back, like a Miniscule Winged Specimen Influxator (a fairy vacuum), to see what an explorer needs to use to examine, capture, and preserve these strange objects of study.

Professor Bell's Journal - One of the many written documents that the professor sends back to the department.

Gargoyle Skeleton - Found in the north transept of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, France. Encased for preservation and study.

Argonaut Probe – Found off the coast of Easter Island. Known to be used by the Professor during underwater investigations.

About the Department of Curiosities and Professor Bell

Professor Rufus Excalibur Bell is the Higgins Armory Museum’s Curator of Curiosities, a staff position John Higgins established upon opening the museum, to be endowed in perpetuity. The Professor traveled the globe studying dragon-lore and mythology, encountering dragons and dragon-hunters along the way. His studies always focused on the creatures of mythology – harpies, griffins, and of course dragons – insisting that their existence is certain if one simply follows the evidence.

One day the Professor went on a walkabout. Perhaps it was something he learned in one of the several dragon-penned books he had found in a monastery in Spain, or on the Sumerian cuneiform tablet he unearthed at the foot of Mount Kuitarra in Asia. The people at the museum are unsure, since both sources have yet to be successfully translated. The Professor has not been back to the museum for more than a brief moment in anyone's living memory, but the boxes and crates keep coming.

After unpacking a couple of boxes, it becomes clear that the professor is traveling both in time and space. His work, always wide-ranging, now encompasses a broad spectrum of natural and cultural history. Somehow, the professor has been freed from some of the boundaries of time and space that modern scholars and scientists must observe. The boxes and crates of specimens, artifacts, and equipment are evidence of this, as they seem to give credence to what is traditionally relegated to mythology and legend.

Featuring art created by Hilary Scott.