Topic description and stories

A head-hunter's skull from Nagaland which was worn on the chest of a Konyak warrior who had captured an enemy head.

Another India exhibition gives voice to India’s most marginalised communities

08 Mar 2017

Hundreds of objects which tell the story of 100 million of India’s most marginalised citizens – its Indigenous and Adivasi people – are to go on...

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Spirit Trumpet, Manchester, 1920s

Ectoplasm, spirit trumpets and paintings from Pompeii: 600 years of Curious Objects

03 Nov 2016

Why does one of the world’s great research libraries have ‘ectoplasm’, a spirit trumpet and beard hair posted to Charles Darwin among its eight...

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Lines of Thought: Telling the Story of History

16 Sep 2016

Shakespeare's 'First Folio', Dante's Divine Comedy , and fragments of Homer's Odyssey from the second century CE, are among the objects in our final...

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Lines of Thought: Understanding Anatomy

09 Sep 2016

A hand-coloured copy of Vesalius’ 1543 Epitome – one of the most influential works in western medicine – and the first written record of a dissection...

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Exhibition reunites artworks from Captain Scott’s final expedition – a century on

01 Aug 2016

A new exhibition has reunited the iconic photography of Herbert Ponting with the watercolours of Edward Wilson – more than a century after the two...

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Lines of Thought: Communicating Faith

27 May 2016

Some of the world’s most important religious texts are currently on display in Cambridge as part of Cambridge University Library’s 600th anniversary...

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Priceless treasures: in a shot commissioned to celebrate Cambridge University Library’s 600th anniversary, Professor Stephen Hawking is pictured with Newton’s annotated first edition of Principia Mathematica.

Lines of Thought: Discoveries that Changed the World

10 Mar 2016

Some of the world’s most valuable books and manuscripts – texts which have altered the very fabric of our understanding – will go on display in...

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Full length view of coffin from the coffin set of Nespawershefyt, About 1000 BC

Uncovering the afterlife of ancient Egypt

25 Feb 2016

The Fitzwilliam Museum is marking its bicentenary anniversary celebrations with an exhibition on its remarkable collection of Egyptian coffins.

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Tin toys from the 1930s–1950s.

The archaeology of childhood

30 Jan 2016

A sledge made from a horse’s jaw, the remains of a medieval puppet, the coffin of a one-year-old Roman child, and the skeleton of an Anglo-Saxon girl...

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How artisans used colour printing to add another dimension to woodcuts

21 Jan 2016

An exhibition of early colour printing in Germany shines a light on the ways in which technology jump-started a revolution in image making. The...

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Newton, Darwin, Shakespeare – and an envelope of ectoplasm: Cambridge University Library at 600

23 Dec 2015

In 2016, Cambridge University Library will celebrate 600 years as one of the world's greatest libraries with a spectacular exhibition of priceless...

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An over-dressed Victorian man looking at the nude Venus de Milo.

How classical sculpture helped to set impossible standards of beauty

18 Jul 2015

What do we mean when we say that someone has ‘classical’ good looks? Are male nudes in art appropriate viewing for family audiences? In looking at...

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