4 October 2014 – 1 March 2015

This October, Siberia comes to the North with Manchester Museum’s upcoming exhibition Siberia: At the Edge of the World, which combines zoological specimens with artefacts, rare objects and photographs. One of the stars of the exhibition will be Masha, a baby mammoth who has been preserved in the Siberian permafrost for 42,000 years and is on loan from the Zoological Museum of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg. Within the Mammoth section of the exhibition, Masha was shown alongside a woolly mammoth model from London’s Natural History Museum, as well as tusks and carvings.

Other taxidermy from Siberia on show included a brown bear, which the Museum had recently bought from Russia for its collection and which was shown for the first time, as well as reindeer, wolverine and some rare Siberian birds.

“We are really excited to bring the marvels of Siberia to the UK for the first time. Collaborating with museums from Russia has been a great opportunity to look beyond the stereotypical view and reveal the true Siberia.”
– Dr Dmitri Logunov, Curator of Arthropods

The exhibition gives an insight into the Siberian landscape, natural world and people of the area, with sections on life from the Arctic Circle to the wilds of the Taiga Forest and the grassy plains of the Steppes, reflecting a vast area where the climate veers between -50°C in the Siberian winter to summers as hot as +40°C. Hunting, fishing and the everyday life of the Siberian people are explored through objects and portraits.