MUSEUMS & GALLERIES
Cambridge offers delights from all over the world with its abundance of museums, galleries and culture. One can marvel at the original artefacts collected by Darwin, view collections from ancient Egypt or admire some classic art. In fact, whatever country or era you fancy looking at, you are able to do it in Cambridge.
Cambridge County and Folk Museum
This fascinating museum takes you back in time and allows you to see what life was like for the Cambridgeshire people since the 1660’s. The 17th Century building is divided into 9 different rooms, all themed to showing how villagers lived, worked and played through the centuries. There are over 20,000 objects, pictures and documents to show what really happened in a 17th century bar, kitchen or lounge. Take a trip back in time in this atmospheric delight of times gone by. Visit: http://www.folkmuseum.org.uk/
The Fitzwilliam Museum
The Fitzwilliam Museum houses world-class collections of works of art and antiquities spanning centuries and civilisations. It is one of Britain’s first public museums and opened in 1848.
Highlights include masterpieces of painting from the fourteenth century to the present day, drawings and prints, sculpture, furniture, armour, pottery and glass, oriental art, illuminated manuscripts, coins and medals and antiquities from Egypt, the Ancient Near East, Greece, Rome and Cyprus.
There are often temporary exhibitions taking place at the museum, one of which is called the sculpture promenade and will be running until February 2011. For further information: http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/index.html
Museum of Classical Archaeology
The Museum of Classical Archaeology is one of the few surviving collections of plaster casts of Greek & Roman sculpture in the world. The collection of about four hundred and fifty casts is open to the public and housed in a purpose-built Cast Gallery on the first floor of the Classics Faculty. Although nothing here is an original, nearly all the well-known (and not so well-known) works from the Classical world can be seen together under one roof. http://www.classics.cam.ac.uk/museum/
New Hall Art Collection
New Hall's unique Art Collection now contains nearly 350 contemporary works by women artists. The Collection, which includes works by Maggi Hambling, Barbara Hepworth and Paula Rego, is one of only a handful of places where female artists display their work under one roof. The collection is regularly visited, consulted, written about and photographed by artists and art historians, school and college students, and others excited by the talent and originality displayed by so many contemporary women artists. For more information: http://www.art.newhall.cam.ac.uk/about/
The polar Museum – Scott Polar Research Institute
This museum, which displays exhibits from the Research Institute, gives a fascinating insight into the expeditions of Captain Scott and other explorers. There are also collections of manuscripts, arts, photos, clothing and relics detailing life of the Eskimo and Lapp natives, wildlife, polar travel and scientific research. Visit: http://www.spri.cam.ac.uk/museum/
The Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences
These interesting museums shows a vast collection of fossils, minerals, rocks and bones as well as give fascinating details of the Geology of the world. Exhibits include a walk through prehistoric times, on land as well as under the ocean, modern day life and how we evolved to what we are day and an exhibit of planet earth and the mineral gallery. For more details: http://www.sedgwickmuseum.org/exhibits/
University Museum of Zoology
The museum is home to a wonderful collection of recent and fossil animals. The displays trace the evolution of animal life and also displays a Darwin exhibition with specimens from his journey on the Beagle as well as those he studied from while a student at Cambridge University. More information can be found at: http://www.museum.zoo.cam.ac.uk/
Whipple Museum of the History of Science
The whipple museum is home to one of the most important collections of scientific instruments and models dating from the middle ages to the present day. Other items of interest include apparatus, books, drawings and photographs and the museum is internationally used by academics all over the world. The museum was founded in 1944 by Robert Stewart Whipple who presented his already vast collection to the university. For more details see: http://www.hps.cam.ac.uk/whipple/aboutthemuseum/
