Blog / Collections

Posted on February 22, 2016 by Fay Curtis.

Mothers in our collection

To celebrate Mother’s Day on Sunday 6 March, we thought we’d have a look around our collection for where ‘mothers’ might appear. Here are just a few we wanted to share with you…

Posted on January 20, 2016 by Fay Curtis.

Transforming Bristol’s Fine Art displays

The challenge continues! We’re transforming Bristol’s Fine Art displays – the Old Masters gallery at Bristol Museum & Art Gallery is now closed for refurbishment, reopening in May 2016.

Posted on January 8, 2016 by Fay Curtis.

The lost lioness returns!

Whilst rummaging through the natural history stores hidden below Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, we came across a lion skull from the research collection which had an interesting old label, handwritten in copperplate script.

Posted on December 11, 2015 by Fay Curtis.

11 Angels from our Collection

On Friday 11 December we’ll be getting into the festive spirit with The National Gallery’s #AngelTrail.

Posted on November 13, 2015 by Fay Curtis.

Burne-Jones’ sleeping beauties

Update, 13 November 2015: This beautiful painting is now back on display in the Victorian and Edwardian Gallery (Second Floor) for the first time in 18 years. Below you can read about its restoration. Shhh! We’ve been tip-toeing around Bristol…

Posted on October 14, 2015 by Fay Curtis.

The beautiful Broughton Herbarium is now online

The Broughton Herbarium is a collection of beautiful pressed plants from Bristol and Jamaica collected by Dr Arthur Broughton (1758–1796), a local physician in the 18th century.

Posted on October 8, 2015 by Fay Curtis.

14 Symbols of Death From Our Collection

Across the world and throughout time people have created symbols and euphemisms for death.

Posted on September 9, 2015 by Fay Curtis.

Bringing the World Wildlife Gallery onto the world wide web

The Natural History Team have started photographing and cataloguing the animals on display in the World Wildlife Gallery as part of a new digitisation project for 2015.

Posted on May 27, 2015 by Fay Curtis.

Virginia Woolf found in museum basement

One of our cataloguers recently found a booklet printed for the Fry memorial exhibition held at Bristol Museum & Art Gallery in 1935 which contains the text of the exhibition’s opening speech written and delivered by Virginia Woolf.

Posted on March 26, 2015 by Fay Curtis.

What inspires our curators?

From Monday 23 to Sunday 29 March 2015 it’s #MuseumWeek over on Twitter. So far this week museums and visitors have been sharing tantalising snippets and intriguing information about what goes on behind the scenes in cultural organisations acro…

Bristol's Free Museums and Historic Houses