Manchester Museum - History

History

The museum's first collections were assembled by the Manchester Society of Natural History, formed in 1821 with the purchase of the collection of John Leigh Philips. In 1850 the collections of the Manchester Geological Society were added.

By the 1860s both societies encountered financial difficulties and, on the advice of the evolutionary biologist Thomas Huxley, Owens College (now the University of Manchester) accepted responsibility for the collections in 1867. The college was then in Quay Street and the museum in Peter Street. The old museum was sold in 1875 after the college had moved to new buildings in Oxford Street.

The college commissioned Alfred Waterhouse, the architect of London's Natural History Museum, to design a museum to house the collections for the benefit of students and the public on a site in Oxford Road (then Oxford Street). The Manchester Museum was opened to the public in 1888. At the time, the scientific departments of the college were immediately adjacent.

Two subsequent extensions mirror the development of the collections. The 1912 'pavilion' was largely funded by Jesse Haworth, a local textile merchant, to house the archaeological and Egyptological collections acquired through excavations he had supported. The 1927 extension was built to house the ethnographic collections. The Gothic Revival street frontage which continues to the Whitworth Hall has been ingeniously integrated by three generations of the Waterhouse family.

The University Dental Hospital of Manchester stood next to the museum until it moved to its present site, its old building was then used for teaching and was later occupied by the Manchester Museum.

In 1997 the museum was awarded a £12.5 million grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund and this, together with monies from the European Regional Development Fund, the University of Manchester, the Wellcome Trust, the Wolfson Foundation and other sponsors enabled the museum to refurbish the building which reopened in 2003.

In 2004 the museum acquired a reproduction cast of a fossil Tyrannosaurus rex which is mounted in a running posture. "Stan", as he is called, is based on the second most complete T. rex excavated in 1992 in South Dakota, by Stan Sacrison.

Recent projects include Alchemy (2003 to current), a project initiating and facilitating artists' access to the museum and the University of Manchester. Funded by Arts Council England it offers four Alchemy Artist Fellowships, curates artist interventions in the permanent galleries and facilitate artists research and the loan of the Manchester Museum's collections for contemporary art projects. Alchemy is the museum's first sustained research programme for artists. By supporting research and the creation of new work, Alchemy aims to reinvigorate museum displays, encourage diverse approaches and present alternative voices.

In August 2007, a temporary exhibition Myths About Race was opened. Many Victorian institutions, including the museum, are now viewed as having contributed to the same racist thinking that justified slavery. As part of the Revealing Histories: Remembering Slavery project, it explores difficult and sensitive issues. Visitors are asked to question the displays in the museum to help shape its future. Revealing Histories is part of a larger Greater Manchester initiative looking at the legacy and impacts of the slave trade.

Lindow Man was on display for a year from April 2008 after being exhibited at the British Museum.