Fitzwilliam Museum announces 2023 exhibition programme

The Fitzwilliam Museum today announced its programme of exhibitions for 2023, bringing together interdisciplinary research and ideas from across the University of Cambridge and beyond to explore how identities and attitudes are formed – and the role art and objects can play in shaping both our presents and our futures.

Islanders: The Making of the Mediterranean (until 4 June)

This critically acclaimed exhibition transports visitors back 4,000 years to the islands and sea of the ancient Mediterranean. It brings to the UK an unprecedented group of over 200 antiquities on loan, most for the first time, from three of the largest Mediterranean islands – Sardinia, Cyprus, and Crete – to demystify the identity of island life and show how the evolution of the Mediterranean world was defined by how connected the islands were across three millennia.

Black Atlantic: Power, People, Resistance (8 September – 7 January 2024)

This landmark exhibition, exploring the impact of the Black Atlantic, will be staged in the Museum’s Founder’s Galleries, which were built using profits from enslavement and exploitation.

Black Atlantic will bring together significant national and international loans with collections from across the University of Cambridge’s museums, libraries and colleges, telling both a Cambridge story and a global one. Objects and artworks from the seventeenth and eighteenth-century Britain will be shown in dialogue with modern and contemporary artworks by artists including Donald Locke, Barbara Walker, Keith Piper, and Jacqueline Bishop.

Real Families: Stories of Change (6 October – 7 January 2024)

This major exhibition will explore the intricacies of families and family relationships through the eyes of artists.

Over the past 50 years, Western ideas of what makes a family and how family life is experienced, have been transformed by advances in science and by changes in social attitudes and law.

Developed in collaboration with the world-leading Centre for Family Research at the University of Cambridge, this exhibition will feature works by artists including Paula Rego, Chantal Joffe, JJ Levine, Lucian Freud, and Tracey Emin.

16 March 2023