The iCHSTM 2013 Welcome Reception will be held at the Manchester Museum, a minute’s walk across Oxford Road from the main Congress venue.

The Manchester Museum is the largest university museum in the UK, with collections of around 4.5 million items focusing on natural history (zoology, botany, geology) and ethnography. It opened to the public in 1888 and forms an integral part of the University of Manchester’s oldest core of buildings, occupying most of the impressive neo-Gothic frontage along Oxford Road.

Our reception will be held across two galleries, both occupying parts of the original site. The Fossils gallery presents a journey through the emergence of life, from the 3500-million-year-old Ediacara biota of Australia to the early human occupation of Britain. The centre of attention for most visitors is ‘Stan’, an unusually complete Tyrannosaurus rex cast from a fossil excavated in South Dakota in 1992, but the displays also represent the Museum’s historic strength in plant palaeontology – a major consideration in a city and region driven by coal.

Upstairs, the Living Worlds gallery reveals something of the historical evolution of the Museum itself. Previously home to a very traditional taxidermic display of mammal specimens, the gallery was comprehensively remade in 2011 with a brief to explore the connections between all living things, including human societies. The carefully preserved nineteenth-century fabric, including original display cases, contrasts interestingly with the new presentation, developed with the Belgian art and fashion show producer Villa Eugénie and addressing themes such as ‘Resources’, ‘Bodies’, ‘Variety of life’ and ‘Domination’.

Drinks will be provided at this event.

For current activities at the Manchester Museum, see the website: www.museum.manchester.ac.uk

For the history of the Manchester Museum, start with Samuel J M M Alberti, Nature and Culture: Objects, Disciplines and the Manchester Museum, Manchester University Press, 2009.