This larger-than-life portrait of Queen Victoria, ageing, careworn, and sad, was sculpted between 1887-1889 as she celebrated 50 years on the throne.

As a portrait of an obviously older, powerful woman (Victoria was aged 68), it's unusual in a museum gallery, where the walls are covered with young beauties. But she is also a powerful symbol of the British Empire. Portraits in museums allow us to think about who was celebrated in the past, and how our opinions of them may have changed over time.

A battle is taking place between humans and centaurs: a wedding party gone disastrously wrong.

A woman fights off a centaur - a creature that is half-man, half-horse - with a well-placed elbow. This monumental sculpture decorated the temple of the king of the ancient Greek gods, Zeus, at Olympia. It's been well-studied, in other words. But no one studies it from the woman's perspective. 

Justyna Ladosz, Education and Outreach Coordinator at the Museum of Classical Archaeology, tells us more.

A pair of studio photographs from colonial Samoa, taken in the 1870s, speak of complex colonial histories and different understandings of race, gender and gender fluidity.

We don't know the name of the subject of the photographs: the labels simply say "man from Tutulia with hair bound [and] unbound". 

Anita Herle, Senior Curator at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, tells us more.

In 1900, in Barrington, near Cambridge, three men pose for a photograph alongside a partially-excavated fossil rhinocerus skill.

How can we imagine the interactions between these three men from very different social classes. Were they respectful of each other's knowledge? Or was it strongly hierarchical?

Liz Hide, Director of the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences, tells us more.

The UCM's Richard White talks to to Tim Drummond about his experience of running 'Bridging Binaries: Pilot LGBTQ+ Tours' at the Museum of Zoology.

Klara, a volunteer LGBTQ+ tour guide at the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences, talks to us about Franz Nopcsa, a paleontologist widely regarded as one of the founders of paleobiology (the biology of fossil animals and plants).

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, and its link to some research notes mysteriously translated into Ancient Greek.

Ezra, a volunteer LGBTQ+ tour guide at the Museum of Zoology, talks to us about chimpanzees and bonobos, and how being on different sides of the Congo River would lead to key differences in their respective lifestyles.
 

The painted and restored cast of the Peplos Kore is one of the most provocative pieces in the Museum of Classical Archaeology's Cast Gallery. But why is she so brightly painted? Were all ancient sculptures coloured in such garish ways? And what does seeing her polychromy mean for how we understand classical whiteness?

Watch this video to find out.