UCL Museums & Collections

What are the Collections?

The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums/petrie

The Petrie Museum today houses an estimated 80,000 objects, making it one of the greatest collections of Egyptian and Sudanese archaeology in the world. Originally, it was a teaching resource for the position of Professor of Egyptian Archaeology and Philology, created by the bequest of the Victorian enthusiast Amelia Edwards (1831-1892).

The Grant Museum of Zoology
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums/zoology

Retaining an air of the avid Victorian collector, the museum contains cases packed full of skeletons, mounted animals and specimens preserved in fluid. Dating back to 1827, the museum covers the whole of the animal kingdom.

UCL Art Collections
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums/uclart

The UCL Art Collections were founded in 1847 with a gift of the sculpture models of John Flaxman now on display in the Flaxman Gallery. The Strang Print Room operates as a study centre and houses works on paper by artists including Dürer, Rembrandt, Turner and Constable. The Slade Collection contains Augustus John and Percy Wyndham Lewis.

The Galton Collection
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums/galton

The Galton Collection comprises around 500 scientific instruments, papers, and personal memorabilia of Sir Francis Galton F.R.S. (1822-1911). It is a popular resource for researchers, for schools, and also for members of the public with an interest in the history of science.

The Institute of Archaeology Collections
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums/uclart

The Institute of Archaeology Collections include fine prehistoric ceramics and stone artefacts from many parts of the world as well as collections of Classical Greek and Roman ceramics, archaeobotanical and zooarchaeological material, minerals and Western Asiatic material including artefacts excavated by Sir Flinders Petrie, and material excavated by Kathleen Kenyon from Jericho.

The Geology Collections
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums/geology

The Geology Collections contain a wealth of rocks, minerals and fossils collected globally over the last 175 years. Highlights include the Johnston-Lavis volcanological collection; the Regional Planetary Image Facility, the UK repository for NASA images and maps; and internationally important micropalaeontological collections.

The Ethnography Collections
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums/ethno

The Ethnography Collections hold an enormous variety of objects exemplifying Material Culture, textiles and artefacts from all over the world. Much of the material was donated in the mid 20th century and acquired through scholars’ fieldwork, principally Daryll Forde, who founded the Department of Anthropology at UCL.

The Science Collections
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums/sciences

The Science Collections house the wealth of scientific apparatus, equipment and memorabilia pertaining to the various scientists and their innovative work that was conducted at UCL over the last two centuries. The Collections include: Physics, Chemistry, Geomatic Engineering, Eletronic & Electrical Engineering, Physiology, and Medical Physics.

The Auto-Icon of Jeremy Bentham
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/Bentham-Project/info/jb.htm

Probably UCL's most famous possession is the 'auto-icon' of Jeremy Bentham, which consists of his skeleton, padded with straw, clothed in his original clothes, with a wax head on its shoulders, placed in a glass-fronted case. Bentham requested that his body be preserved in this way in his will made shortly before his death on 6 June 1832. The cabinet was moved to UCL in 1850.