Birds! Nikola Irmer: A Painter in the Ornithological Collection

The artist Nikola Irmer brings taxidermied animals from museum depots back into the light. For 15 years, she has been going on a visual voyage of discovery in museum collections, exploring animal-human relationships.

Of the 37 bird portraits on display in the exhibition, Irmer painted about a quarter in the depots at the Haus der Natur; the others come from natural history collections in Berlin, Gotha, Florence, Oxford, Admont and Vienna. The works are complemented by the museum's bird specimens, info screens and a film where you can look over the artist's shoulder as she brings a parrot to life with precise brushstrokes.

The current and mainly man-made threat to birds is told through three already extinct bird species - including a skeletal specimen of the dodo, extinct 100 years after its discovery.