Museums

Paul Lay is moved by an exhibition of tokens left by the mothers of children abandoned during the mid-18th century.

Miri Rubin explores the medieval galleries at the V&A and the British Museum.

Corinne Julius is impressed by the breadth of material on display at London’s newly reopened Jewish Museum.

The British Museum opened on January 15th, 1759.

Helen Strudwick, Curator of the Egyptian galleries at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, explains the new refurbishment at the museum and the opportunities it has afforded.

A Tudor portrait in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, once believed to be Mary I when princess, has recently been relabelled ‘Possibly Lady Jane Grey’ as the result of research by Ph.D student J. Stephan Edwards. Here he explains how the iconography in the painting prompted the discovery.

Peter Furtado visits the new National Waterfront Museum in Swansea, the museum of Welsh industrial and maritime heritage.

Paul Doolan visits a new museum in Geneva that presents the history of Reformed Christianity and Calvinism as a key and positive factor in European history.

Ian Bottomley introduces an exhibition which reflects a special moment in Anglo-Japanese relations in the 17th century, echoed today by a unique loan arrangement between the Royal Armouries Museum, Leeds and the Nikko Toshogu Shrine, resting place of the first significant Shogun.

Jack Lohman, Director of the Museum of London, explains the significance of two Victorian paintings and why the Museum is delighted to have been able to acquire them.

Simon Chaplin describes the extraordinary personal museum of the 18th-century anatomist and gentleman-dissector John Hunter, and suggests that this, and others like it, played a critical role in establishing an acceptable view of dissection.

Phil Reed, Director of the new Churchill Museum, gives a personal insight into the development of the new museum housed in the Cabinet War Rooms, which opens to the public this month.

Pamela Pilbeam celebrates the bicentenary of the arrival of Madame Tussaud's waxworks in Britain.