Four of the museums in the University of Cambridge are to benefit from funding to enhance their internationally important collections.

The Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA), the lead strategic body for museums, is making the awards to ensure that these outstanding collections can be enjoyed and appreciated by as many people as possible.

The Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Cambridge will receive £97,180 to make available online thousands of photographs, documentary sources and ancient and modern objects relating to the Arctic communities of eastern Canada. Via the web, people who live in Nunavut, Northwest Territories Canada, the source of many of the Arctic collections, will be working with the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and the Scott Polar Research Institute on means to contribute local knowledge and historical information directly to the documentation of these collections.

The University Museum of Zoology and the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences will receive a total of £141,272 to collaborate on the development of new permanent exhibitions of Charles Darwin’s geological and zoological specimens from the museums collections. Finches, fish, many hundreds of rocks, minerals and fossils collected by Darwin on his voyage on HMS Beagle (1832–6), and microscope slides of the barnacles that absorbed him for a major part of his later life will all be on display to the public, many for the first time. As well as showing what the specimens meant to Darwin during the development of his evolutionary theories, the exhibitions will also show how relevant Darwin’s geological and zoological work is today.

The Fitzwilliam Museum - the University’s art museum - will use its grant of £99,984 to offer a new perspective on its collections, revealing information about key objects that highlight connections with people. Objects will be selected for rich associations: portraits of the eminent and the little-known; the hidden stories of lives connected with objects; the people who discovered them and the collectors who cherished them. This information will be made available online through the Museum’s website and by tours and talks within the Museum, as well as helping to seed future exhibitions, publications and collaborations.

In total, thirty-four museums across England have been awarded grants from the Designation Challenge Fund, part of the MLA’s Renaissance programme to transform England’s regional museums. This funding has also allowed the creation of a new post within the University, the Museums Development Officer, who will contribute to raising the profile of the University’s museums and develop the aim of making their collections accessible to as many people as possible.

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