Browse Exhibits (21 total)
2002 Encyclopaedia of the North East
The only exhibition devoted to the character of this important region of Scotland, many hundreds of objects, photographs and quotations are displayed to illustrate the area from the first settlers of 8000 years ago to the present day. The exhibition is arranged in alphabetical order to create some surprising juxtapositions of objects of different ages and functions and to encourage visitors to reflect on ideas of classification and order.
2007 Acts of Union
An online exhibition marking the 300th anniversary of the Anglo-Scottish Union of 1 May 1707.
2007 Jacobite Virtuosi
Rome's importance as an artistic centre was undisputed throughout the eighteenth century. After the deposition of the Catholic James VII and II in 1688, he maintained a Court in Rome which attracted Jacobite followers. They became tourist guides, tutors in architecture and archaeology, architects, decorators, art-dealers and conoisseurs. Eminent amongst these virtuosi was a group of Scots, all with Jacobite connections.
2007 Scotland, Africa and Slavery in the Caribbean: a North East Story
Learn about how the history of Aberdeen and North-East Scotland is entangled with the history of transatlantic slavery.
2010 Connecting Collections
The University’s museum collections, as well as its collections of archives and rare books, includes items that might be linked, perhaps by a particular person or a place. Over the years, some of these links have been forgotten and items split between different collections. A project funded by the Museums Recognition Fund put all available information on a publicly accessible database and created a few examples of linked material.
2016 The Land Endures: Bringing Sunset Song to Life
7 June - 30 November 2016:
A co-curated student exhibition interpreting Lewis Grassic Gibbon's classic novel, Sunset Song.
2017 Aberdonians in the Americas
Five local collectors travelled to Latin America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to seek their fortunes as explorers, doctors, miners, or missionaries – and met cultures and experiences strikingly different from their lives at home.
2018 Ta Kheru: Discovering the life of an Ancient Egyptian woman
Using CT scans and the latest medical visualisation techniques experts have been able to uncover insights into the life of Ta-Kheru, an Ancient Egyptian woman whose ceremonially mummified remains have been in the University of Aberdeen museums’ collections since the 18th century. The exhibition tells the story of Ta-Kheru, alongside an impressive holographic display of the CT scan and a facial reconstruction of The Lady of the House.
The exhibition between October and December 2018 had over 6500 visits and was accompanied by a series of talks by specialists from the Roemer- und Pelizaeus- Museum and an expert in facial reconstruction.
2019 Canaletto in Aberdeen
University research confirmed that the collection includes a painting by Canaletto. The exhibition also reveals how it was acquired as the legacy of slavery.
2019 Walking with Birds: The Art of Audubon and MacGillivray
This exhibition showcases Audubon’s spectacular ‘Birds of America’, a metre-high book filled with Audubon’s stunning life-size colour depictions of American bird species, with text prepared by MacGillivray. It explores the travels of both men – including MacGillivray’s often humorous account of his epic journey on foot from Aberdeen to London – and their legacies in the worlds of zoology, ornithology and environmental conservation.
The exhibition was first shown in the Sir Duncan Rice Library Gallery in 2019. Some of the text in this online version has been changed in order to more fully represent the racial history of John James Audubon, and to acknowledge the part that people of colour had in the creation of Birds of America.