Feast! In this life and the next

Feast! In this life and the next

A new exhibition focusing on feasting in the Iron Age

Looms of our Grandmothers, picb’il textiles from Guatemala

16 May – 6 October 2019

A new Spotlight Gallery exhibition focusing on historic and contemporary picb’il textiles from MAA’s collections.

More than Music: Collecting Kun Opera

Collecting Kun Opera in the Spotlight Gallery 16 October 2018 – 8 April 2019

A Survival Story – Prehistoric Life at Star Carr

21 June 2018 – 19 April 2020
Li Ka Shing Gallery

Sometimes in archaeology we come across objects that truly intrigue us. The mysterious 11,000-year-old headdresses, found at the Mesolithic site of Star Carr in Yorkshire are just such an example.

Photographing Tutankhamun

14 June  – 23 September 2018
South Lecture Room

An unique exhibition exploring the pioneering images taken during the 1920s excavation of Tutankhamun’s tomb, by British photographer Harry Burton.

Swish

Carved Belts & Fibre Skirts of Papua New Guinea
Spotlight Gallery

An exhibition focused on the material culture of the southeast coast of Papua New Guinea.

Another India

Explorations and Expressions of Indigenous South Asia
8 March 2017 to 22 April 2018
Li Ka Shing Gallery

A unique exhibition exploring the heritage of India’s minority Adivasi (‘original inhabitants’) or Indigenous communities through the collections of MAA.

Kholwa

The Longing of Belonging
13 June – 10 September 2017
South Lecture Room

An exhibition of photographs of Zionist Christians in contemporary South Africa, by Sabelo Mlangeni.

The Island Warrior: Coconut Fibre Armour from Kiribati

April 4th– September 25th 2017 Spotlight Gallery, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge. Co-curated by Dr Ali Clark, and Rachel Howie This exhibition focuses on the extraordinary suits of armour made in the small islands of Kiribati, in…

Carriers of Culture: Women, Food and Power from the Congo Basin

October 2016 – March 2017
Spotlight Gallery

Exploring the role of women and food from Kongo in the past and today, MAA’s first exhibition in our rebranded spotlight gallery, is co-curated with the Congo Great Lakes Initiative.

Antipodes

22 June – 26 September 2016
South Lecture Room

This new collaboration between the University of Cambridge Museums and the Australian Print Workshop brings together three of Australia’s most respected contemporary artists Brook Andrew, Tom Nicholson and Caroline Rothwell.

Hide and Seek: Looking for Children in the Past

30 January 2016 – 29 January 2017
Li Ka Shing Gallery

Find glimpses of children lives in East Anglia and across England from 1 million years ago to the 20th century, on display in the Li Ka Shing Gallery until January 2017.

Tuniit: Arctic Giants & Ivory Miniatures

January – September 2016
Micro Gallery

Exquisite sculptures of miniature human figures, polar bears, caribou, walrus and birds a thousand years old, created by pre-Inuit people living in the region of present day Igloolik in the Canadian territory of Nunavut.

River Stars Reindeer

Imaging Evenki & Orochen communities of Inner Mongolia & Siberia

Exhibition open 23 June – 27 September 2015

One hundred years ago the Russian ethnographer, Sergei Shirokogoroff and his wife Elizabeth, were invited to the snowforests of the Amur River to study the indigenous Evenki and Orochen peoples. In 1929 Cambridge’s own graduate, Ethel Lindgren and her soon to be husband Oscar Mamen, went in search of these ‘ little-known tribes’ as they were considered to be ‘fast dying out’. Together they amassed a considerable collection of 26,000 culturally and historically important photographs, the majority of which have never been seen, until now.

Sounding out the Morning Star – Music and West Papua

Tuesday 10 March – Sunday 22 November
Micro Gallery

Focusing on sound and music in West Papua, past and present, this exhibition draw together items collected in the early twentieth century with personal items from The Lani Singers, a West Papuan group in exile in the UK.

Tartan: Its Journey through the African Diaspora

Tuesday 17 – Sunday 22 March South Lecture Room A surprising glimpse onto the trajectory of a seemingly typical Scottish fabric across four continents. Observe the story of how tartan kilts of the British Army’s Highland regiments influenced the development…

The Power of Paper: 50 years of printmaking from Australia, Canada and South Africa

14 February 2015 – 6 December 2015
Li Ka Shing Gallery

From the mid-twentieth century onwards, colonized and indigenous communities began to represent themselves through modern media. This exhibition is a revelation of eloquent prints made by black and indigenous artists since the 1960s.

Magic and Memory: Paul Montague in New Caledonia

Tuesday 9 September 2014 – Sunday 8 March 2015

A small display remembering Cambridge zoologist Paul Montague and his research in New Caledonia.

Crafting Colour: Beads, Pattern and Painting from the Kalahari

24 June – 28 September 2014
South Lecture Room
Contemporary prints and paintings produced in western Botswana over the last twenty five years feature in this summer exhibition.

Buddha’s Word: The Life of Books in Tibet and Beyond

28 May 2014 – 17 January 2015

This exhibition charts some of the incredible journeys that the words of the Buddha have taken: crossing mountains and oceans and taking different material forms in different places. It focuses on books, not just as objects of learning and study, but as relics of the Buddha, and sacred objects in their own right.

Tapa: Barkcloth paintings from the Pacific

Tuesday 25 March – Saturday 19 April 2014 This exhibition draws upon the Museum’s world-class collection of barkcloth, dating from the eighteenth century to the present day. Exceptional barkcloths, rarely displayed, will be featured including two works by women of…

Discoveries: Art, Science and Exploration

31 January – 27 April 2014 Two Temple Place Discoveries: Art, Science and Exploration, the interior of Two Temple Place Presenting singular objects and unearthing little-known treasures in the extraordinary interiors of Two Temple Place on London’s Embankment, Discoveries is…

Gióng

Tuesday 28 October – Sunday 2 November 2013 We are thrilled to welcome to our galleries, for one week only, one of the great art treasures of Vietnam. Gióng, by renowned artist Nguyễn Tư Nghiêm , has travelled from the Vietnam Museum of…

The Lost World (Part 2)

23 October – 30 November 2013
Andrews Gallery

The Lost World (Part 2) is a solo exhibition by the Tasmanian artist, Julie Gough, simultaneously installed in the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and at Contemporary Art Tasmania (CAT), Hobart.

Origins of the Afro Comb: 6,000 years of culture, politics and identity

2 July – 28 September 2013, South Lecture Room Discover the extraordinary 6,000-year history of African hair combs in this joint exhibition between the Fitzwilliam Museum and Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology, Cambridge. Traditionally playing an important role in creating, maintaining and…

The Cultured Rainforest

4 April – 1 June 2013 South Lecture Room The Cultured Rainforest tells the story of the rainforest on the island of 
Borneo and the people for whom it has been home, today and in the past. The 
exhibition overturns…

Tall Stories: Cannibal Forks

15 September – October 31 2010 This was the first version of the artwork, ‘Tall Stories: Cannibal Forks’ on display in the Maudslay Gallery next to the Fiji cabinet as an intervention into the museum’s displays. The artwork comprised 26…

Unlimited Global Alchemy

23 June – 18 August 2012 Unlimited Global Alchemy is a collaborative exhibition project spearheaded by artist Rachel Gadsden (UK). Working with the Bambanani artist-activist Group (South Africa), they explore the psychology and politics of HIV/AIDS and of life-giving medical…

PITOTI

7 – 23 March 2013 • P • I • T • O • T • I • is a multimedia digital rock art exhibition which originated from years of research by Dr Christopher Chippindale and Dr Frederick Baker of…

Gifts and Discoveries

25 May 2012 – 16 February 2013 Gifts & Discoveries is the first special exhibition in MAA’s new Li Ka Shing Gallery. It tells the stories behind some of the outstanding artefacts in the Museum’s collection and traces their journeys…

Chiefs & Governors: Art and Power in Fiji

7 June 2013 – 19 April 2014,
Li Ka Shing Gallery

This will be the first ever exhibition dedicated to Fijian Art outside Fiji. It draws on MAA’s exceptional collection of Fijian artefacts, photographs and archives, a collection closely linked to the early colonial history of Fiji and the foundation of the Museum.

Creativity in the Bronze Age – a response

2 April – 30 June 2013
An intervention into MAA’s experimental World Archaeology Gallery by a group of seven contemporary craft artists, ranging from artist jewelers to potters:
Mary Butcher, Susan Kinley, Helen Marton, Syann van Niftrik, Julian Stair, Sheila Teague and Gary Wright

Arctic Passages

  The early twentieth century saw an explosion of scholarly interest in the Polar Regions, and James Mann Wordie was at the centre of it in Britain. He personally led five scientific expeditions to Greenland and Canada in the 1920s…

SAPMI

The Sami are an indigenous people in northern Europe. Their traditional territory, called Sãpmi, extends across four countries: Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Kola Peninsula in Russia. Artefacts from MAA’s Sami collections are once again on display in the world anthropology galleries, in a new exhibition which opened on Saturday 27 February.
MAA holds a small but significant collection of Sami artefacts and photographs, including two rare and important eighteenth-century divination drums, craft items from the nineteenth century and a valuable collection made by Ethel Lindgren and MikelUtsi in the 1930s.
The exhibit has been developed through cooperation between MAA staff, Sami colleagues in Sweden, and MPhil and doctoral students in Social Anthropology at Cambridge.

Assembling Bodies

10 March 2009 – 6 November 2010 Assembling Bodies: Art, Science & Imagination aims to challenge pre-conceived notions about the human body. This innovative, multi-disciplinary exhibition examines ways that bodies are constructed, known and transformed in various historical, cross-cultural and…