© 2007, Lyndall Phelps, Richard Davies and the Natural History Museum

During the Second World War, children from the cities were shipped off to the country in a programme to ensure the safety of some of Britain’s most valuable assets. Evacuation wasn’t just for people, though – during the Blitz, major museums also sent off important items from their collections to safer places.

The Natural History Museum (NHM) was one such, organising an exodus of its most important specimens to stately homes in rural areas. Artist Lyndall Phelps has taken this as her inspiration for a new photography installation at the Hertfordshire branch of the NHM, at Tring. The exhibition, Evacuate, runs until February 3 2008.

Phelps researched the evacuation of mammals, insects and birds to 25 English country houses while she was installed as artist in residence at Tring, where many of the specimens now reside.

© 2007, Lyndall Phelps, Richard Davies and the Natural History Museum

Her installation features two series of photographs, which are being shown on a plasma screen in the Victorian curator’s office at Tring. The photographs juxtapose evacuated items with the country homes – in one series photos of the house interiors are placed in the museum next to specimens that were once evacuated there, and in the other, the specimens are photographed in the houses to which they were moved.

So, a drawer of pinned insects with large wings is placed before a photo of a large and opulent drawing room; while in another shot, a photo of stuffed rodents sits rather surreally on a table in a luxuriant, antique-furnished bedroom.

© 2007, Lyndall Phelps, Richard Davies and the Natural History Museum

Other works show a portrait of a barn owl on a shelf among the books and vestments of a priest, and a tray of insects with coin-sized bodies propped up next to a photo of a grand, gothic entrance hall.

Phelps has also recreated a book made by one of the NHM entomologists during the war, which records the specimens evacuated, cataloguing no less than 700 specimens photographed for the installation.

Evacuate is the latest in a programme of contemporary arts at the NHM that aims to stimulate dialogue between science and visual art, funded by the Arts Council, the Leverhulme Trust and the NHM.