The World Revealed Exhibition
23 March @ 10:00 am – 12 October @ 4:00 pm
Monday to Saturday – 10am – 4pm
Excluding Bank Holidays
The exhibition ‘The World Revealed’ explores how items were collected and donated to the Institution since 1824, what this reveals of the shifts in our scientific, cultural and moral understanding over this period, and looks at who were the travellers and explorers who brought back objects from other cultures in distant parts of the world. Asking, why were they collected, and what motivated people to donate them to a public institution for preservation and display.
The exhibition also provides a fantastic opportunity to get up close and personal with some remarkable artefacts, some of which have not been seen by the public for more than a century. Visitors can learn about how our understanding of life on earth developed with the discovery of well-preserved fossils in the 19th century, and how archaeologists added to our knowledge of Roman Britain by excavating and preserving objects from the everyday life of the times.
‘The World Revealed’ features rarely displayed objects including:
- Jurassic fossils collected by the famous Mary Anning
- A Roman Brooch from 1st Century AD excavated in Lansdown
- An ivory figurine from the ruins of Pompeii
- Relics from the lost Franklin Arctic expedition
- A phial of the brandy in which Lord Nelson’s body was preserved after the Battle of Trafalgar
- The earliest known photographs of Bath dating from the 1850s
