After a long year of delays, the natural world's greatest treasures are ready to shine at Melbourne Museum
From this Friday 25 June Melbourne Museum will finally open the doors to Treasures of the Natural World, featuring some of the best collection items from London’s world-class Natural History Museum.
Experience the magic of a visit to London’s Natural History Museum right here in Melbourne! Explore this sustainability-focused exhibition and marvel at over 200 of the biggest, oldest, rarest and most fascinating treasures that have changed the course of scientific history.
Visitors to Melbourne Museum on Friday 25 June will be the first to see this highly anticipated international exhibition. After being postponed in 2020 due to the COVID-19 global pandemic, Museums Victoria and Natural History Museum curators and conservators have worked collaboratively for more than a year to bring these rare treasures to life.
Exclusive to Melbourne and for the first time in Australia, Treasures will delight with wonders from the visionaries who built modern museums, the big thinkers who changed science forever and the roamers who collected from around the globe. Unique to Melbourne Museum, the exhibition includes the addition of First Peoples’ knowledge, language and story representing an important step in acknowledging the deep connection First Peoples have with the natural world.
‘I am delighted that we can at last welcome visitors to see this wonderful exhibition at Melbourne Museum. Treasures of the Natural World features highlights from one of the world’s greatest museums, London’s Natural History Museum. As they experience the exhibition, we think that visitors will have a sense of real joy and connection with our most important treasure - the natural world. Every object in the exhibition tells a unique and important story about our changing relationship with nature and the environment,’ said Lynley Crosswell, CEO & Director of Museums Victoria.
Doug Gurr, Director of the Natural History Museum in London said, ‘We know that seeing these astonishing specimens face-to-face has an incredibly powerful effect and it is by working with international partners that allows us to share this experience with audiences beyond London. Everyone who visits Treasures of the Natural World in Melbourne will come away with a better understanding of our planet and a real passion to protect it.’
Evidence of extinct animals, the world’s biggest butterfly and the very flea species that carried the bubonic plague are included amongst the treasures that have voyaged from London to captivate local audiences. Visitors’ curiosity will be sparked by an unearthed fossil that helped coin the term dinosaur, proof that our ancestors walked the earth with woolly mammoths and a complete skeleton of the terrifying Sabre-toothed cat.
Treasures of the Natural World is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see some of nature's rarest specimens and uncover the stories behind some of history’s greatest scientific discoveries. We hope that all who visit are inspired to care for our greatest treasure, the natural world itself.
Treasures of the Natural World
25 June 2021–16 January 2022
Melbourne Museum, 11 Nicholson Street Carlton
Tickets $15–$29
Children under 3 free, discounts for concessions, family tickets $65
Explore Treasures of the Natural World, exclusive to Melbourne Museum from 25 June. Tickets on sale now.
