Explore the Collections

Objects from across the University of Cambridge Museums as you've never heard them before...

Who gets to define disability?

Ellen, a volunteer LGBTQ+ tour guide for the University of Cambridge Museums, talks about a statue representing Durga, found in the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

Why are we reluctant to engage with the idea of a woman taking part in a battle?

Take a tour of the exhibition ‘Church and the Ancestors: Sacred pir mats from Asmat, Papua, Indonesia’.

A statue is given a voice

An audience with collectors Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon

For Museum Remix: Unheard, Sade Ojelade and Eleanor Wilkinson answer your questions about their chosen objects live on YouTube

Sacred carvings made by the Nenets people of North Siberia

Julia, a volunteer LGBTQ+ tour guide at The Polar Museum, talks to us about an egg laid by an Adélie penguin in the early 20th century.

A small plate with a big story

Mathelinda Nabugodi investigates the impact of colonialism and the slave trade on Romantic poets.

A twist of the hand is an exhibition in the Museum of Classical Archaeology, featuring works by Norwich-based artist James Epps.

Josh Nall, Curator of Modern Sciences at the Whipple Museum of the History of Science, talks about the makers who aim to deceive.

Meet Titus, the titan arum plant with a very distinctive smell.

A poem that gives voice to the unknown subject of two 19th-century photographs

The combined histories of botanical science and warfare

A tiny figurine head from Roman Egypt

Discover the evolutionary tale of the chimpanzee and bonobo.

Why does the Whipple Museum of the History of Science have a Scientology E-meter?

Hear the gossip from the royal court... 

An online exhibition exploring archaeological practice today, with original artwork by Zofia Guertin and Sofia Greaves.

Meet Little John, a very bony fish and learn about conservation in the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences.

Objects from the University of Cambridge Museums as you've never seen them before...

For Museum Remix: Unheard, Liz Hide and Helen Ritchie answer questions about their Museum Remix objects live on YouTube

How can we give voice to an enslaved woman who died two thousand years ago?

A well-travelled typewriter

An exhibition of photographs by Robert McCabe

How should we approach the Queen who became a symbol of the British Empire itself?

Enjoy a large collection of paper valentines courtesy of Dr Rebecca Virag and The Fitzwilliam Museum

This piece concerns two bronze sculptures of Roman emperors Augustus and Claudius at the Museum of Classical Archaeology.

Imogen Gunn, Collections Manager at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, talks to Nick Oram about a rude Roman pot. 

This piece concerns Mary Anning's Icthyosaur in the Sedgwick Museum. What stories of power and memory, gender and colonialism, could this ichthyosaur bring to life?

Charlotte Connelly, Curator at The Polar Museum, tells us about some atmospheric ink drawings and scrimshaw created by whalers voyaging in the Arctic.

Jack Ashby, Museum Manager at the University Museum of Zoology, tackles taxidermy and its inclusion in Artist: Unknown.

Find out more about the oldest modern bird fossil from the age of dinosaurs

Discover the origins of the Scott Polar Research Institute as they celebrate 100 years of pioneering research. 

A portrait that reveals the relationship between exploration and exploitation

16th-century knights led dangerous lives

Listen to poems written by Year 8 students from Cromwell Community College as part of a Heritage Fund project called 'Pacific Currents'.

An exciting new collection of dinosaur casts was donated to the Sedgwick Museum in 2017. Among them, those of a prehistoric icon: Tyrannosaurus rex.

Visit an online exhibition featuring two works sculpted nearly 500 years apart. Despite this, the materials, techniques, scale, and the idealisation of the male body are similar. Intrigued? 

A remarkable Victorian scrapbook

Eliza Spindel, Curatorial and Research Assistant at Kettle's Yard, tells us about a tea bowl from Kettle's Yard and a case of mistaken identity.

Listen to poems written by Year 8 students from Cromwell Community College as part of a Heritage Fund project called 'Pacific Currents'.

Prehistoric necklaces inspire an intriguing poem

Rebecca Virag talks about the making and meaning of a portfolio of lithographic prints which were commissioned by the British Government’s propaganda department in 1917.

Even the small sounds of an afternoon can be significant, when you can hear them

The Whipple Museum of the History of Science as an institution is not neutral. A response to the colonial 1875 Jigsaw Globe on display in the Museum’s Globe Gallery.

What can a kayak, gut parka and voting badge tell us about climate change?

How the Saka people of the Great Steppe made history and great art.

The human body is a museum

Take an LGBTQ+ tour of the Museum of Zoology. 

Listen to poems written by Year 8 students from Cromwell Community College as part of a Heritage Fund project called 'Pacific Currents'.

Enjoy a virtual view of MAA's July 2022 - April 2023 exhibition, showcasing collections from across our museums, libraries and colleges.

A mask with many unheard stories

Royal relationships explored through crockery

Helen Ritchie, Research Assistant at The Fitzwilliam Museum, talks about samplers and the role they played for young women in the 17th and 18th century.

New clothes for a Queen who became a symbol of the British Empire

Enjoy an online exhibition featuring five colour lithographs and one etching by New Zealand artist Marian Maguire, who imagines how the passing millennia might have affected the traditional roles of the ancient Greek goddesses. 

"An unbroken marriage of souls"

View an online exhibition by the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, celebrating Te Atairangikaahu, Māori Queen.

An intriguing pair of necklaces from early human history

Early in lockdown, the Getty Museum challenged social media users to recreate artworks from its collection using household objects.

Dive into the miniature world of tiny marine creatures

Dr Susanne Turner, Curator at the Museum of Classical Archaeology, talks to us about a plaster cast taken from a carved marble head of the ancient Greek god Apollo. 

Meet a pioneering geologist, motorcyclist and spy...

A portrait of an unknown woman

Watch a film about one of the most provocative pieces in the Museum of Classical Archaeology's Cast Gallery.

A new exhibition at Cambridge’s Museum of Zoology illuminates the beautiful, turbulent history of butterflies across the UK.

Next time you are in a museum, think about what items might have been used for, and what kind of society might have created them...

Theo Sayers imagines the story behind an archive photograph in the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences.

Enjoy a tour of the Sedgwick Museum's new Collections Research Centre.

How do we untangle complex colonial histories to reach the unnamed sitter of these portraits?

An "unbroken marriage of souls"

Meet Bridging Binaries LGBTQ+ Tour guide Tim Drummond and the Museum of Zoology's Emperor Penguin

Diamonds with a dark past

This piece concerns the Iguanodon fossil cast in the Sedgwick Museum.

Meet the French Empress and her botanical namesake

Photograph with an untold story

Listen to poems written by Year 8 students from Cromwell Community College as part of a Heritage Fund project called 'Pacific Currents'.

Nicholas Thomas, Director at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, talks about a 19th / early 20th century barkcloth.

Meet Antinous, the boy who became a god...

Game Designer Elizabeth Simoens invites Exhibitions and Display Coordinator at the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences, Rob Theodore, to her island to visit the museum.

‘This Globe is Broken’. A poem about how the globe as an object is not neutral. A response to the colonial 1875 Jigsaw Globe on display in the Whipple Museum’s Globe Gallery.

Remember Titus, Cambridge University Botanic Garden’s stinky corpse flower? He’s had babies...

200-year-old spectacles that help us see changing attitudes to disability

Travel to windswept Greenland with a trusty typewriter as your guide

How do you make sure you pass successfully into the Ancient Egyptian afterlife? This Facebook Live video takes us to the Fitzwilliam Museum to visit the Book of the Dead of Ramose.

Who counts as a scientist?

A botanical watercolour reveals the connection between science and empire

Behind the scenes on Facebook Live in the paper conservation studio with Harry Metcalf, Conservator of Works of Art on Paper, and Hannah Price, UCM Programme Coordinator.

Brace yourself for a digital exhibition featuring work by artists who specialise in the polar regions.

Take a look at the Sedgwick Museum archive from a different narrative.
 

Watch this film to find out more about Magdalene Odundo, one of the greatest ceramic artists working today, and her practice.

This piece concerns four broken terracotta figurines from Naukratis, a Greek trading post in Egypt from the Museum of Classical Archaeology. 

A major exhibition explores the evolution of island identity on Cyprus, Crete and Sardinia from the Neolithic to the Romans