Manchester Museum reopens
Discover fascinating history, beautiful art and amazing creatures.
After being closed for a year and a half, Manchester Museum is reopening to the public on 18 February. A £15 million project to expand and improve the museum means there are now more exhibition spaces and galleries to wander around.
The new-look museum will open with Golden Mummies of Egypt, an exhibition featuring eight mummies and lots of other objects from ancient Egypt. The show will use research from the University of Manchester to show how people lived in ancient Egypt and to unwrap the secrets behind the mummification process. Visitors can also meet Stan the Tyrannosaurus rex and
April the Tenontosaurus at the new dinosaur display, or visit the vivarium, which houses a collection of live amphibians and reptiles – including critically endangered species. Comics will feature in the museum’s new Belonging Gallery, with artwork from 20 illustrators showing how they use comic books to tell their stories.
The South Asia Gallery is the UK’s first permanent gallery to celebrate the lives and history of Britain’s South Asian communities. Objects on display include a hand-rickshaw (a two or three-wheeled cart pulled by one person) from Bangladesh, which has been decorated by young artists in Manchester.
The Lee Kai Hung Chinese Culture Gallery celebrates the strong links between Manchester and China. Here, you can see a 20-metre scroll showing a Chinese emperor’s birthday procession, and there are also short films featuring people from Manchester’s Chinese community.
To find out more about what’s going on, ask a grown-up to go to museum.manchester.ac.uk