Artefact of the month - June 2011 - Joan Miró

Joan Miró visited ZSL London Zoo in 1964 as a guest of Desmond Morris, the then Curator of Mammals. Miró signed ZSL Visitors Book and did this small drawing next to his signature.

Desmond Morris is an artist himself and at one time exhibited his paintings with some of Miró's. See his interview about this exhibition and Miró's visit to ZSL London Zoo at Desmond Morris interview . Many of Miró's works are currently exhibited at Tate Modern until 11 September.

ZSL has lent two works to the Tate Britain Watercolour Exhibition . One of these is a painting of Macropus parryi by Edward Lear Artefact of the month - February 2011 Macropus parryi and the other is a Volume III of John Gould's A monograph of the Trochilidae, or family of humming-birds. This has been featured as Artefact of the month - August 2007 and a virtual copy can be viewed in the Blackburn Pavilion at ZSL London Zoo.

The ZSL Visitors Book is part of ZSL Archives, the Book contains a variety of signatures but Miró's seems to the only one accompanied by a sketch. The emerging online catalogue of ZSL's Archives can be searched through the ZSL Library Catalogue and general information about the ZSL Archives and Zoo ephemera 'Zoophemera' can be found on the Archives webpage