Swarms of butterflies, a bog body mystery and much more …

Exhibitions

All exhibitions at Manchester Museum are FREE.

Romuald Hazoumè: Dance of the Butterflies
14 February 2015-December 2015
Dance of the Butterflies is a stunning new art work by one of Africa’s foremost contemporary artists Romuald Hazoumè. It features swarms of multicoloured ‘butterflies’ which will take over the Museum’s Living Worlds gallery, interacting with the Museum’s own collections. Hazoumè, whose work was featured in We Face Forward, the Manchester-wide celebration of West African art and culture in 2012, will return to create this work for Manchester Museum. The hundreds of butterflies are made from off-cuts of vibrant African wax-print fabrics from the artist’s home country of Benin. Dance of the Butterflies represents a very African take on politics, exploitation and the ‘butterfly effect’- the way in which tiny impulses within chaotic systems can lead to unexpectedly serious effects. The display opened to coincide with the reopening of the Whitworth, following a £15million redevelopment.

Family events and activities:

Baby Explorers
Tues 3 Mar, 10.30-11.15am, 11.30am-12.15pm & 1-1.45pm.
Book on 0161 275 2648 (Bookings will be taken a week in advance from 2pm), free
Sensory play and interactive story sessions for babies who aren’t walking yet. Every other Tuesday (except half term school holidays when there are drop-in sensory play sessions 11am-2.30pm).

Baby Explorers
Tues 17 Mar, 10.30-11.15am, 11.30am-12.15pm & 1-1.45pm
Book on 0161 275 2648 (Bookings will be taken a week in advance from 2pm), free
Sensory play and interactive story sessions for babies who aren’t walking yet. Every other Tuesday (except half term school holidays when there are drop-in sensory play sessions 11am-2.30pm).

Early Opening for Early Birds
Sat 21 Mar, 9-10am
Drop-in, free, families with children under 5s and their older siblings
Are you and your young children up with the Larks and excited to get out and about and exploring? Head to Manchester Museum’s Living Worlds gallery for their early opening for early birds. Enjoy self-led tours, object handling and craft activities. (Just the Living Worlds gallery will be open at 9am – you can explore the rest of the Museum from 10am).

Big Saturday: The Body Experience
Sat 21 March, 11am-4pm
Drop-in, free, all ages
“What a great day for the family. We all learned a lot. I can’t believe how big a human kidney is!!!” Jonathan, age 41 (Body Experience 2014)
Explore for yourselves the wonder of the human body at the ‘Body Experience’ Big Saturday at Manchester Museum. For the fifth year running, researchers from across Life Sciences at The University of Manchester will take over the Museum from top to bottom, allowing you to explore the human body from head to toe! Interactive stands and activities for all the family will include a range of activities from making your own mucus, to performing spine surgery with marshmallows.
Part of British Science Week

Magic Carpet
Fri 27 Mar, 10.30-11.30am & 11.30am-12.30pm
Book on 0161 275 2648 (from a week before from 2pm), free, under 5s and their families/carers
Story making and activity sessions. For toddlers up to 5yrs and their families/carers (Young babies welcome with older siblings).

Baby Explorers
Tues 31 Mar, 10.30-11.15am, 11.30am-12.15pm & 1-1.45pm
Book on 0161 275 2648 (Bookings will be taken a week in advance from 2pm), free
Sensory play and interactive story sessions for babies who aren’t walking yet. Every other Tuesday (except half term school holidays when there are drop-in sensory play sessions 11am-2.30pm).

Discovery Centre
Sats & Suns, 11am-4pm
Drop-in, free, all ages
Drop into the Discovery Centre for drawing and other art activities inspired by the Museum’s collection and pick up one of our free Museum activity sheets.

Hands-on
Drop-in, free, all ages
Throughout the week visit one of our handling tables and get hands-on with objects from the collection, such as an Alexander the Great coin, an urban fox and an ancient Egyptian scarab beetle.

Talks, tours and workshops for adults:

Carry on Collecting: Sex, Gender & Ethnography at Manchester Museum
Mon 2 Mar, 1-2pm
Book online at mcrmuseum.eventbrite.com, free, adults
Ethnographic collections formed in Britain in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were invariably informed by contemporaneous notions of gender and sex. The chiefly male collectors misrepresented and misappropriated objects associated with concepts of gender and sex, found beyond Europe, to fit their own particular colonialist world view. Sex was inextricably associated with child birth, women with domesticity and men with warfare and violence. This ethnocentric paradigm was reproduced in museum displays and interpretation. This talk is part of the Wellcome Collection’s Sexology Season www.wellcomecollection.org/sexologyseason

Innocent until proven guilty?
Mon 2 Mar, 7.30pm
Book online: https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/date/141665, £4 (50% donated to St. Mary’s Sexual Assault Referral Centre), adults
‘Only 1,070 rapists are convicted every year despite up to 95,000 people – the vast majority of them women – suffering the trauma of rape – according to the new research by the Ministry of Justice, the Home Office and the Office for National Statistics.’ The Independent, 10th January 2013.
In a supposedly progressive society which aims to protect the individual how can this be? Do our other values, such as the assumption of innocence until proven guilty have a role to play? Should this assumption be questioned for situations in which hard evidence beyond individual testimony is notoriously hard to come by? Or are there other ways in which the system needs to change to protect people from the most traumatic and often life-threatening crimes?
Organised in partnership with SICK! Festival

English Corner
Tues 3 Mar, 1-2.30pm
Drop-in, free, adults
Free English conversation classes using the Museum’s collection as inspiration for discussion.

Forensic Science: A bog body mystery
Sat 7 Mar, 1.30-4.30pm
Book online at mcrmuseum.eventbrite.com, free, adults
To celebrate International Women’s Day and the Manchester Wonder Women season of events, take part in a hands-on practical science workshop with The University of Manchester Biomolecular Archaeologist, Konstantina Drosou. Konstantina will describe her current research, which involves extracting and analysing ancient human DNA. The workshop will explore the real-life applications of this research and will give you the opportunity to use our scientific equipment in The Lab at Manchester Museum. By analysing the available clues and completing a scientific practical, you can take on the role of a forensic expert to solve the mystery of some unknown human remains.

Why be normal?
Tues 10 Mar, 7.30pm
Book online: https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/date/141662, £4 (50% donated to the Lesbian & Gay Foundation), adults
The question Why Be Normal? is in one sense a challenge and a provocation: why do we have to act in conformity to long established cultural models, in particular with regard to our sexual preferences? Why not be different? From another perspective it asks us to consider why we do act and desire in the ways we do, either in conformity to, or divergence from a norm. It raises the question of personal choice and the effect of social or cultural context. In the background remains the persistent idea: We are what we are born with. Personal, cultural and biological factors are increasingly seen as interweaving to create the context in which we all individually answer the question: Why Be Normal?
Organised in partnership with SICK! Festival

Is there such a thing as a rational suicide?
Tues 17 Mar, 7.30pm
Book online: https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/date/141659, £4 (50% donated to charity), adults
Suicide is so often seen as an essentially irrational act, wrapped up with misunderstandings of mental illness and the causes of profound unhappiness. ‘If only they had just thought this, done that’, ‘If only I could have been there. I know I could have made them see it differently’: These are common and not unreasonable feelings. But perhaps for some, it is a rational decision, made with a clear head, based on a reasonable response to conditions that are unchangeable and unmanageable. What are the implications of such a perspective for how we respond to suicide when it happens? How does this affect the nature of the role society needs to play in preventing suicide?
Organised in partnership with SICK! Festival

Rock Drop: Geology Identification Sessions
Thurs 19 Mar, 2-3pm
Drop-in, free
Curator of Earth Sciences, David Gelsthorpe, will be available once a month to answer your questions and identify your rocks and fossils.

Taster tours
Every Wed & Thurs, 1pm
Drop-in (no need to book), free, meet at the Information Desk (Floor G)
Come and join one of Manchester Museum’s Visitor Services Assistants for a tour and learn more about some of the fascinating objects on display at the Museum. Tours are drop-in and focus on different aspects of the Museum and its collections each time.

Vivarium tours
Every Thurs, 12pm
Book on 0161 275 2648, free
Take a tour of one of the most popular and distinctive galleries at Manchester Museum. Explore our comprehensive collection of live reptiles and understand how the Museum is taking a leading role in the conservation of some of the world’s most endangered amphibians.

 

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