Collections

The collections we care for

The collections Manchester Museum cares for are far more than a series of objects in glass cases.

They tell rich stories about what it means to be human, build connections between cultures and help us to better understand some of the most pressing issues of our time.

As one of the UK’s largest university museums, we provide a home for around 4.5 million objects across a variety of subject areas, but these aren’t our collections, they’re yours.

We look after them for the benefit of all and that’s why much of our work is focused on making collections more accessible, using them to connect communities with their cultural heritage, to foster understanding and belonging, and to underpin research that has a positive impact on the lives of people.

As part of this, it’s important we are honest about the origins of collections, in order to acknowledge harm but also encouraging healing. Although Manchester Museum was borne of civic pride, it was also borne of Empire, colonial violence and extraction, so while the collections housed here can undoubtedly spark joy and celebration, they can also cause pain.

Our work on repatriation, restitution and indigenisation aims to recognise this. All of the collections at Manchester Museum are open to the possibility of unconditional return to communities of origin, but we have also worked hard to remove barriers to access by taking collections to schools, care homes and places of worship, putting our work at the heart of communities.

Through collaboration with those communities, we hope to use these incredible collections to better inspire future generations and ensure the Museum remains a rite of passage for future young Mancunians.

What will you find in the collections?

Manchester Museum houses a wide range of collections, including Egypt and Sudan, archaeology, earth sciences, entomology, archery, botany, living cultures, zoology, numismatics, and the Vivarium.

Egypt and Sudan

The outstanding collection of Egyptian and Sudanese objects cared for by the Museum is one of the largest in the UK. It illustrates both everyday life and preparations for the afterlife.

The homes of ancient Egyptians do not generally survive, but our collection includes exceptionally well-preserved everyday objects from a pyramid-builders’ town, known as Kahun, which are nearly 4,000 years old and give a glimpse into how ordinary people lived. The Museum also houses an important collection of gilded mummy masks and realistic painted images known as ‘Faiyum Portraits’, dating back to the Graeco-Roman Period (around 300 BCE to 300 CE).

Earth Sciences

Fossil, meteorite, mineral and rock specimens from all over the world help us understand space, our planet and the diversity of life on Earth.

Stan the Tyrannosaurus rex grabs a lot of the attention in our Fossils and Dinosaur Galleries but we also care for a collection of around 100,000 fossils, including one of the most important collections of Ice Age animals in Europe, particularly from Creswell Crags, on the border between Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. The fossils found there give a rare glimpse into what was happening at the extreme northerly edge of life in the last Ice Age and a window into the world of the first people to live in Britain, which has helped transform our understanding of climate change.

You can also find Percy the Plesiosaur, a spectacular fossil discovered by University of Manchester students on a field trip led by Dr Fred Broadhurst, and April the Tenontosaurus, lovingly reconstructed for display in 2023 with the help of Earth Sciences students from the University.

Entomology

With an estimated 2.5 million specimens, the entomology collection at Manchester Museum is thought to be the third largest entomological depository in the UK. The origin of these insect collections dates back to the foundation of the Museum by the Manchester Society for Promotion of Natural History in 1821, and the oldest insect specimen is the pill-beetle collected by William Kirby, the founder-father of the British Entomology, and described by T. Marsham in his Entomologica Brittanica in 1802.

As well as housing a comprehensive collection of British insects of all groups, highlights include the collection of earwigs, containing almost a half of the species described worldwide, a significant worldwide collection of spiders, and the collection of butterflies and moths, including a selection of swallowtail butterflies accounting for almost 90% of the world fauna.

Zoology

From aardvarks to zebras, whales to microscopic single-celled animals, the zoology collection includes about one million specimens, helping us to understand more about changes to biodiversity, environment and relationships between animals.

The collection includes many mounted mammals, one of the largest collections of shells in the UK, large collections of birds, eggs and bryozoa (small marine animals), as well as a diverse collection of specimens preserved in spirit. It is worldwide in scope, with specimens from the Arctic to the Antarctic, and from all the world’s oceans, but is particularly rich in animals from the North West, the UK, and the former British empire.

Manchester Museum is also home to many famous ‘characters’, including Maharajah the Elephant and Maude the Tigon, who both lived in Manchester’s Belle Vue Zoo, plus the skull of Old Billy, the oldest horse in the world, who lived to 62. The collection also includes specimens from famous experts and researchers, including birds collected on the Galapagos by Charles Darwin in 1835.

Botany

The botanical collection forms a physical record of where plants and fungi have been found and encompasses around 750,000 specimens. The backbone of the collection was created by merging three large private collections from James Cosmo Melvill (worldwide plants donated in 1904), Leopold Hartley Grindon (cultivated plants donated in 1910) and Charles Bailey (European plants donated in 1917). The most recent significant addition has been the collection of British brambles donated by Alan Newton in 2012.

Housed in the Museum’s botanical storeroom, the Herbarium, most of the botanical specimens are dried, pressed and mounted onto sheets of paper or stored in paper envelopes. These are all labelled with the plant name, who picked it, where from and when. As well as the pressed plants the collection also contains dried fruits and seeds, timbers, microscope slides, illustrations, models, fungi and jars of medicinal plants.

The Vivarium

The Vivarium is recognised worldwide for its conservation work. A recent success story, and a landmark moment in the Museum’s history, was the captive breeding of the Variable Harlequin toad (also known as Atelopus varius). This was the result of an inspiring partnership project between the Museum, Panama Wildlife Conservation charity (PWCC) and the Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health at the University of Manchester. It means Manchester Museum is the only place outside Central America where you’re able to see these beautiful, and critically-endangered, amphibians.

The history of collections at Manchester Museum

The origins of the collections housed at Manchester Museum can be traced back to the formation of the Manchester Society for the Promotion of Natural History in the 1820s. The collections of the Manchester Geological and Mining Society were transferred in 1850. Following the decline of the Society, the collections were transferred to Owens College (now The University of Manchester) in 1867 and a museum was built in 1885 to house these collections.

Foundational collections and financial support came from early textile industrialist John Leigh Phillips whose success in textile manufacturing rested on slave-grown cotton. At the height of British colonial power, the Museum’s collections grew significantly. The early 20^th century collecting frenzy and the Museum’s role as a colonial repository saw botany, Egyptology, archaeology and anthropology collections grow at pace.

A new extension was built for the archaeology and Egyptology collections in 1912, and another for the ethnology (now living cultures) collection in 1927. In 1977 the Museum took over the former University Dental School for use as administration offices. Between 2000 and 2003 the Museum benefited from a major capital development project funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and the University, which allowed for a redisplay of the galleries as well as new facilities for visitors and the collections.

The collections have been developed mainly through donation, bequest and field collecting or research by staff in both the Museum and the wider University. Collecting activity was highest during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, although collecting has continued at lower levels in all collecting areas since that time.

The Museum has had associations with a number of leading figures. Its existence is due to Thomas Henry Huxley, who advised the Manchester Society for the Promotion of Natural History that its collection should be passed to Owens College. The first curator was Huxley’s acolyte William Boyd Dawkins.

The future of collections

Museums play a vital role in helping us to develop our understanding of one another and the world we live in.

But this understanding has often been shaped by the perspectives of a privileged few, to the exclusion of many others.

The collections at Manchester Museum were largely accumulated within the context of Empire, through the support of donors who benefited from the practice of racial slavery, forced extraction and the systemic oppression of Indigenous Peoples.

Manchester Museum is not unique in this position. The stories told by museums have typically centred the voices of those in positions of power, while excluding or underrepresenting many others. Communities across the world have been denied the opportunity to speak about their own cultural heritage and to share their rich experiences with museum visitors.

Despite being seen as trusted, impartial centres of knowledge and learning, museums have never been neutral. So, when thinking about the future of collections at Manchester Museum, it is important we confront this history with honesty and care.

Through meaningful collaboration and co-creation, particularly with communities of origin, we are aiming to build greater knowledge around the collections we hold, add new perspectives and layers to our understanding, and tell richer stories.

Our South Asia Gallery, for example, was co-curated with 30 members of the South Asian diaspora from Greater Manchester and beyond, allowing them to tell their stories, in their own voices, on their own terms. But this is just the start of the journey and we’re committed to opening up collections for the benefit of our communities, as well as making more informed decisions about how they can best inspire future generations.

This could mean local environmental group Ardwick Climate Action drawing on botany collections to inform pollution-combatting planting efforts, as much as our ongoing work around African collections, working with diaspora communities and fellow museum professionals to better understand the material we care for.

All of our collections are also open to the possibility of unconditional return. In 2019, we became the first museum in Europe to unconditionally return secret, sacred and ceremonial material to communities of origin when returning 43 objects to the Aranda People of Central Australia, the Gangalidda and Garawa Peoples of North West Queensland, the Nyamal People of the Pilbara and the Yawuru People of Broome.

The return of 174 cultural heritage items to the Anindilyakwa People of Groote Eylandt in September 2023 went even further, embracing the full scope of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples by returning material beyond the secret, sacred and ceremonial that is important to the traditions and memories of the Aboriginal community that made them.

Not only do such returns help to acknowledge harm and allow healing, they also enable dialogue, partnership and collaboration. This means we are able to develop greater knowledge and understanding, while opening new opportunities for the development of exhibitions and events that would not otherwise have been possible.