Yorkshire Museum: Curator battle seeks 'creepiest exhibit'

This severed lower leg turned into an animal was submitted by York Art Gallery

A British museum has launched a worldwide hunt for the "creepiest exhibit", challenging curators to share their weirdest objects online.

Yorkshire Museum began the search with its own offering - a bun of real hair from the head of a Roman woman.

Entries from others across the world have included an executioner's mask, taxidermy "mermaid" and a mummified leg.

The York-based museum holds a new "curator battle" every Friday.

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Millicent Carroll, of York Museums Trust, said: "The curator battle has been gradually building as more and more museums and the general public look at our Twitter feed every Friday to see what theme we're going to pitch.

"Last week's "Best Egg" had replies from the Hermitage in Russia and the American Museum of National History, but the creepiest object has taken it to another level.

"It is great for us and other museums to be able to still share our collections with the public when our doors are closed - we just hope we haven't given anyone any nightmares!"

Replies to the tweet have come from the German History Museum, Oshawa Museum in Ontario, Canada, the New York Historical Society and America's first museum - the Charleston Museum.

In the UK curators from the Imperial War Museum, Royal Armouries, Bank of England Museum, National History Museum, the Ashmolean Museum and many others have been getting involved.

This bun of human hair was found in the grave of a Roman woman, dating back to the 3rd or 4th Century

Victorian models of figures, made from crabs' legs and claws, were also put forward by York Castle Museum

York Museums Trust - which runs the Yorkshire Museum, York Castle Museum, York Art Gallery and Centre of Ceramic Art, York St Mary's and York Museum Gardens - has created Museums From Home, to share details of their collections online.