We are excited to let you know more about Multaka-Oxford, our new project funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Collections Fund. It will be running until September 2019. The project will create volunteer opportunities for forced migrants and use museums and collections as a ‘meeting point’ to bring people together. We are jointly delivering Multaka-Oxford with the Pitt ... [Read more...]

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Flo, a member of Young Producers, discusses how we can discover the history of objects by examining their surface.  ** From Time-Turners in Harry Potter to Alethiometers in His Dark Materials, clever instruments with complex markings and shiny surfaces are great centre-pieces to stories of adventure and intrigue. I like to think that JK Rowling and Philip Pullman ... [Read more...]

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Tom, from the Museum’s Young Producers group, talks about astrolabes and the craftsman Abd al A’imma.   ** It is easy to forget the past. This is perhaps most true of technology. We have no reason to think about it, but every day we do something utterly radical. We reach for a smartphone, and we’ve harnessed ... [Read more...]

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Although our Making Prints Public project has been focused on cataloguing and researching the prints held in our collection, it has also highlighted the inter-connections between the prints and the object and library materials. Scientific instrument maker John Bird (1709-1776) is a good example. Bird was particularly known for his large-scale astronomical instruments produced for ... [Read more...]

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