We have a special treat for you as part of the Open Cambridge Festival 2021: not one but three virtual tours of the Museum. Go behind the scenes for a tour of the Bird Room with Curator of Ornithology Dr Daniel Field and a tour of the Insect Room by Research Assistant Matt Hayes. Then follow Assistant Director Jack Ashby as he guides you around the Museum’s temporary exhibition ‘Breaking Point: Fragility in Clay and Nature’.

Behind the Scenes Tour of the Museum of Zoology Bird Room

Join Dr Daniel Field, Strickland Curator of Ornithology at the Museum of Zoology, as he takes you on a behind the scenes tour of the Museum’s bird room. With over 30,000 study skins, as well as taxidermied specimens and skeletons, this store is home to many treasures that help us to understand the evolution and diversity of life on Earth.

Insect Room Tour at the Museum of Zoology

Research Assistant in the Museum of Zoology Matt Hayes shows some of his favourite drawers of insects stored in the Museum’s insect room. Find out about the conservation of British butterflies, and see some impressive tropical insects from tarantula hawk wasps with its painful sting, to enormous beetles and colourful bird wing butterflies.

Breaking Point: Fragility in Clay and Nature

Join Assistant Director Jack Ashby as he takes you on a tour of the temporary exhibition ‘Breaking Point: Fragility in Clay and Nature’. Here three artists, Mella Shaw, Jayne Ivimey, and Elspeth Owen, exhibit work inspired by the natural world among the displays in the Museum of Zoology. All three artists have a strong interest in the environmental movement and create ceramics that seek to engage, provoke and stimulate discussion.

With artworks placed in and amongst the cases of taxidermy, skeletons and specimens in jars, visitors will see the Museum’s collections in a new light. Throughout the exhibition, the fragility of fired clay as a material is explored in a context of ecological decline, ecosystem collapse and environmental change and uncertainty. Find out more about the exhibition on the Museum’s website.