I dreamed I lived in a stalinist state where keeping chickens had become mandatory

[SWv2]

It’s kind of in a side room

Indeed. I googled the place.

"One of the Horniman’s oddest exhibits, and now part of the World Gallery, is its 100-plus-year-old merman (male mermaid), the so-called Japanese monkey-fish. Such objects were made in Japan to meet western demand created by the popularity of PT Barnum’s hoax, the Feejee Mermaid, but were often sold in the 19th century by con artists hoping to pass them off as real animals. "