The Fitzwilliam Museum
From Egyptian coffins to Impressionist masterpieces – the Fitzwilliam Museum's world-class collections of art and antiquities span centuries and civilizations.
Venue Type:
Museum
The Fitzwilliam Museum has magnificent permanent collections of international importance. The entire collection is a Designated Collection of national importance.
Holdings include antiquities from Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome; English and European pottery and glass; furniture, clocks, fans and armour, coins, medals, illuminated, literary and music manuscripts and rare printed books; paintings, including masterpieces by Simone Martini, Domenico Veneziano, Veronese, Titian, Rubens, Hals, Van Dyck, Canaletto, Hogarth, Gainsborough, Constable, Degas, Renoir, Cézanne, Monet and Picasso, portrait miniatures and 20th century art, and changing displays of drawings, watercolours and prints. The collections also include artefacts from Sudan and Cyprus, and Chinese, Japanese and Korean art, rugs and samplers.
Founded in 1816, the Museum is housed in splendid buildings, the first of which, designed by George Basevi opened in 1848.
Items from this collection
Collection details
Weapons and War, Music, Fine Art, Decorative and Applied Art, Costume and Textiles, Coins and Medals, Archaeology
Key artists and exhibits
- Ancient Egypt, Sudan
- Greece and Rome
- Roman and Romano-Egyptian Art
- Western Asiatic displays and Cypriot Art
- English and European pottery and glass, furniture, clocks, fans, armour
- Chinese, Japanese and Korean art
- Simone Martini, Domenico Veneziano, Titian, Veronese, Rubens, Van Dyck, Hals, Canaletto, Hogarth, Gainsborough, Constable, Monet, Degas, Renoir, Cézanne and Picasso
- Designated Collection
Henry Moore’s Hill Arches (1973)
- 1 February 2016 — 30 November 2017 *on now
For the next two years a monumental bronze sculpture by Henry Moore, titled Hill Arches, will be on loan to the Fitzwilliam Museum from the Henry Moore Foundation in Hertfordshire.
Moore is best known for sculptures of the human figure sited in architectural or natural settings, but here he has created a landscape in its own right - perhaps, as the title suggests, an echo of the rolling hills of his native Yorkshire.
This enormous, four piece sculpture will be sited in front of the Museum, visible to all visitors and those walking down Trumpington Street.
Suitable for
- Family friendly
Website
http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/whatson/exhibitions/article.html?5537
Celebrating the First 200 Years: The Fitzwilliam Museum 1816 - 2016
- 4 February — 30 December 2016 *on now
Running throughout 2016, this exhibition will explore the Fitzwilliam’s past, present and future. A timeline of the first 200 years will introduce key themes and characters, while displays of objects will show how the collections have developed over two centuries.
The exhibition runs alongside a new book The Fitzwilliam Museum: A History. For the very first time, this will tell the full 200 year story of the Museum. The triumphs and challenges of successive Directors, the changing nature of the Museum’s relationship with its parent University, and its dogged survival through the two World Wars. It will also shed light on the colourful, but previously little-known, personal life of Viscount Fitzwilliam himself.
Suitable for
- Family friendly
Website
http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/whatson/exhibitions/article.html?5460
Being Modern: Kettle's Yard at the Fitzwilliam Museum
- 8 April 2016 — 31 March 2017 *on now
Works by artists who sought to make a new art responding to the modern world are brought together in this second display from Kettle’s Yard. The display re-unites for the first time, paintings and sculptures by pioneering modern artists who are represented in both collections.
Suitable for
- Family friendly
Website
http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/calendar/whatson/being-modern-kettles-yard-fitzwilliam-museum
Britain’s Longest Serving Monarchs
- 31 May — 2 October 2016 *on now
Queen Elizabeth II is now the longest serving monarch in British history. Coins, medals and banknotes bear witness to the Queen’s remarkable reign, and to the lives and times of George III and Victoria, who both reigned for six decades. The story begins in the Middle Ages with Henry III and Edward III, the longest serving monarchs of medieval England.
Suitable for
- Family friendly
Website
http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/calendar/whatson/britain’s-longest-serving-monarchs
COLOUR: The Art and Science of Illuminated Manuscripts
- 30 July — 30 December 2016 *on now
This exhibition celebrates the Fitzwilliam’s 2016 bicentenary with a stunning display of 150 illuminated manuscripts from its rich collections. They range from the prayerbooks of European royalty and merchants to local treasures like the Macclesfield Psalter, from an alchemical scroll and a duchess’ wedding gift to the ABC of a five-year old princess.
Manuscripts were at the heart of Viscount Fitzwilliam’s collection with which the Museum was established in 1816. Many of them are displayed here for the first time. They can only be seen at the Museum due to a clause in Fitzwilliam’s bequest which prevents them from leaving the building and reveals the anxieties of the Founder who had assembled his treasures in the aftermath of the French Revolution.
The hundreds of images sheltered in volumes that were cherished in princely and religious libraries for centuries constitute the largest and best preserved repositories of medieval and Renaissance painting. With most panel and wall paintings destroyed by war, greed, puritanical zeal or time, illuminated manuscripts are the richest resources for the study of European painting between the sixth and the sixteenth century - the main focus of this exhibition. Highlights of Byzantine, Armenian, Persian and Sanskrit manuscripts are also included. Travel from eighth-century Northumbria to seventeenth-century Nepal via Oxford, Paris, Bruges, Cologne, Florence, Venice, Constantinople, Jerusalem and Kashmir.
Discover the secrets of original masterpieces and modern forgeries. Find out what cutting-edge technologies reveal about their painting materials, and the images’ meaning and value to their owners.
Suitable for
- Family friendly
Website
http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/colour
An Amateur's Passion: Lord Fitzwilliam's print collection
- 9 August 2016 — 29 January 2017 *on now
The Museum’s founder, Lord Fitzwilliam, was an enthusiastic collector of prints. In his lifetime he amassed around 40,000 loose impressions and devoted significant time and energy arranging them into albums of varying sizes to keep on the shelves of his library. His collection reflects his broad taste, ranging from etchings by Rembrandt to works by other highly skilled but less fashionable printmakers.
This exhibition looks at what interested Fitzwilliam most in acquiring and ordering his print collection and will feature examples of his albums, rarely seen in public but offering a fascinating insight into the mind of a late 18th century collector.
Suitable for
- Family friendly
Website
http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/calendar/whatson/amateurs-passion-lord-fitzwilliams-print-collection
The Fitzwilliam Museum
Trumpington Street
Cambridge
Cambridgeshire
CB2 1RB
England
Website
fitzmuseum-enquiries@lists.cam.ac.uk
Telephone
01223 332900
Fax
01223 332923
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