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Leicester Museum & Art Gallery facts for kids
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| Former name | New Walk Museum |
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| Established | 1849 |
| Location | New Walk, Leicester, England |
| Architect | Joseph Hansom |
| Owner | Leicester City Council |
| Nearest car park | On site (no charge) |
The Leicester Museum & Art Gallery is a super cool museum in Leicester, England. It's located on New Walk, close to the city center. This museum first opened its doors way back in 1849, making it one of the very first public museums in the United Kingdom! Inside, you'll find amazing exhibits about science, history, and art from all over the world and right here in Leicester. The first building was designed by Joseph Hansom, who also invented the famous hansom cab (a type of horse-drawn carriage). The museum has grown bigger over the years, with the latest expansion happening in 2011.
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Awesome Museum Exhibits
The museum has many exciting displays that are always there for you to explore. These include giant dinosaurs, an Egyptian area, cool minerals from Leicestershire, and the very first Charnia fossil ever found nearby. There's also a "wildspace" area with stuffed animals from all over the world.
Dinosaurs and Fossils
The Leicester Museum & Art Gallery has a fantastic collection of ancient creatures that are now extinct. You can see two huge reptile skeletons from the Mesozoic Era on display. One is a cetiosaur found in Rutland, and the other is a plesiosaur from Barrow upon Soar.
The Rutland Dinosaur, nicknamed George, is a type of Cetiosaurus oxoniensis. This amazing dinosaur is about 15 meters (50 feet) long! It's one of the most complete sauropod skeletons ever found anywhere in the world. George was discovered in June 1968, in a quarry near Little Casterton in Rutland. The bones have been at the museum since 1975. Most of the bones you see on display are copies, because the real ones are too delicate to be used. The Rutland Dinosaur even appeared on the TV show Blue Peter in 1985!
The Barrow Kipper is a skeleton of a plesiosaur found in Barrow upon Soar in 1851. It got its name because it looks a bit like a flattened fish! Scientists are still figuring out its exact type, but it's a very important fossil.
In September 2011, the museum made its Dinosaur Gallery even bigger and better. They rearranged the fossils, added a new room, and updated the whole gallery. The famous David Attenborough opened the new Dinosaur Gallery. This new area mainly shows off extinct marine reptiles (sea creatures). The main attractions include the Rutland cetiosaur, the Charnia fossil, the plesiosaur, a Leedsichthys fossil, and a piece of the Barwell Meteorite.
The museum also has a super important fossil called Charnia. This is the first fossil ever found that came from rocks older than the Cambrian period, called Precambrian rocks. Before this discovery, people thought large life forms didn't exist that early! The Charnia fossil at the museum is the original one from which the species was first identified. It's like a celebrity fossil for Leicester! Charnia masoni was named after Roger Mason, who found it in Charnwood Forest in 1957 when he was just a schoolboy. He later became a geologist. The museum's display explains that another schoolgirl, Tina Negus, actually found it a year earlier, but "no one took her seriously."
Ancient Egypt
The museum has a special area dedicated to Ancient Egypt. You can see four Egyptian mummies here! Their names are Pa-nesit-tawy, Pe-iuy, Bes-en-Mut, and Ta-Bes. Pe-iuy was the first mummy the museum bought in 1859. Bes-en-Mut and Ta-Bes were brought from Egypt around 1880 by John Mason Cook, the son of Thomas Cook (who started the famous travel company). He later gave them to the museum.
Pa-nesit-tawy was the last mummy to join the collection in 1928. He lived around 600 BC and was buried in Thebes. He was given to Edward VII (who was then the Prince of Wales) in 1869. Edward VII then gave him to Oliver George Paulet Montagu, who later gave him to a local society.
The Egyptology section has been expanded to show more about daily life in Egypt. There's also a section about death in Egypt, which is where the four mummies are displayed. Most of the ancient Egyptian objects came from Europeans who visited Egypt in the 1800s, when there was a big interest in Egyptology. The museum has over 400 objects from Ancient Egypt! Until recently, they could only show about a third of them. The new gallery lets them display many more for everyone to see. Since 2020, the gallery has also been home to a statue of a husband and wife, Sethmose and Isisnofret.
Other Cool Collections
The museum has a stuffed polar bear named Peppy! Peppy is the mascot for Fox's Glacier Mints. You can find Peppy in a collection of taxidermy animals from all over the world, including animals from cold polar regions, warm savannahs, and temperate areas.
The museum also holds the largest collection of German Expressionist art in the UK. These paintings, by artists like George Grosz, Wassily Kandinsky, and Paul Klee, were secretly brought out of Nazi Germany before World War II. The Nazis didn't like these artists' work and called it "degenerate art." Hans Hess, whose father was a German art collector, used to be an assistant curator at the museum.
In 2007, over 100 pieces of Picasso ceramic art were put on display at the museum. These were kindly donated by Richard Attenborough, a famous actor and director.
Special Exhibitions
On the first floor, there's a special area for exhibitions that change regularly. This means there's always something new to see! Some recent exhibits have included a display about the search for the remains of King Richard III, a fun Wallace and Gromit display, and an exhibit called Spirits of War to Hands of Peace, which showed paintings and sculptures about the terrible effects of war and the power of peace.
In the summer of 2019, a portrait of King Richard III was on temporary display. This was part of a project by the National Portrait Gallery. It was very special because King Richard III was reburied in Leicester Cathedral in 2015.
New Name for the Museum
The museum reopened in August 2020 after being closed for a while because of the COVID-19 pandemic. When it reopened, it had a new name: Leicester Museum & Art Gallery. This new name was chosen to show that it's the main museum in Leicester. It also helps people from outside the city find it more easily when they search online for museums in Leicester.