Manchester Museum is on a mission to become the most inclusive, imaginative and caring museum you’ll ever visit. As part of the University of Manchester, research and learning is in our DNA, but now we’re aiming to build stronger emotional connections with visitors too, creating a space where everyone feels they belong.
Wander through our beautiful 130-year-old building and lose yourself in stories of what it means to be human, including the moving, personal narratives of the South Asia Gallery, co-curated with 30 inspiring community members.
Rethink your relationship with the natural world, while enjoying rich natural science collections that underpin vital conservation work. Unusually, our collections even include live amphibians and lizards – Manchester Museum is the only place in the world outside Panama where you’ll see the extraordinarily beautiful and critically endangered harlequin toad.
Find a sense of joy and connection through events that bring communities together to celebrate, share and learn, from Vaisakhi to Lunar New Year and Africa Day.
We are reimagining what it means to be a museum at the heart of its community, while putting community at the heart of what we do. In February 2023, the Museum completed a major, values-led redevelopment that created new gallery spaces and visitor facilities with collaboration and co-creation at their heart. You’ll find a beautiful picnic area, a spacious prayer room for all, a quiet room and Changing Places toilet.
We’re also attempting to confront our past with honesty and transparency. Although Manchester Museum was built from a sense of civic pride, it was also borne of Empire, so we continue to grapple with these colonial roots, opening all our collections to the possibility of return to communities of origin. By foregrounding diaspora voices, Global Majority partnerships and Indigenous perspectives, we hope to connect communities locally and globally to forge a more inclusive, hopeful future.