Exhibitions currently running:

The Sámi magic drum - This display focuses on a drum made in Scandinavia in the 1600s by the Sámi people. In the hands of a skilled shaman it was a magical weapon that could help to protect the community. Its skin is covered in painted designs including reindeer, the sun and moon, and a man in a boat travelling across the underworld sea. These represent guides and accounts of journeys to other realms – to the worlds of spirits and gods. From 27 November 2008 – 18 January 2009.

Babylon: Myth and Reality - For two thousand years the myth of Babylon has haunted the European imagination. The Tower of Babel and the Hanging Gardens, Belshazzar’s Feast and the Fall of Babylon have inspired artists, writers, poets, philosophers and film makers. Over the past two hundred years, archaeologists have slowly pieced together the ‘real’ Babylon – an imperial capital, a great centre of science, art and commerce. The exhibition explores the continuing dialogue between the Babylon of our imagination and the historic evidence for one of the great cities of antiquity at the moment of its climax and eclipse. Until 15 March.

Living and Dying - The Wellcome Trust Gallery - The next stage in the return of the Museum's magnificent ethnographic collections, this new permanent gallery examines how different non-western cultures each have their own ways of making sense of their place in the world and coping with life's everyday challenges and misfortunes using strategies often very different to our own. Star objects include the Easter Island Statue, regalia from Captain Cook's voyages and Apocalypse figures from the Day of the Dead. Permanent exhibition.

Enlightenment: Discovering the world in the 18th century - The restoration of the King`s Library and the opening of the new permanent exhibition Enlightenment: Discovering the world in the 18th century will form the centrepiece of the Museum`s 250th anniversary celebrations. The King`s Library formerly housed the library of George III - now transferred to the British Library in St Pancras - and is the earliest part of the present museum building. A Grade I listed interior, it was constructed in the 1820s and remains an unspoilt architectural gem, the finest and largest neo-classical interior in London. By the end of 2003, this unique space will be fully restored and reopened as Room 1' of the British Museum. The accompanying exhibition - an intellectual complement to this historic and spectacular visual setting - will focus on the British Enlightenment during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the great age of discovery and learning into which the Museum itself was born in 1753.

The Enlightenment was a period of intense activity devoted to the study and interpretation of the natural world, the past and other civilisations. Classification, collecting and deciphering were all important stages on the way to understanding the world and the new exhibition will show how the British Museum was fundamental to this process and itself one of the Enlightenment's most potent achievements. The Act of Parliament with which the Museum was founded drew upon the Enlightenment's universal ideas to proclaim that all arts and sciences were connected and to make freely available the Museum's collection of 'natural and artificial [man-made] rarities' for the enjoyment and education of all.

The exhibition examines this formative period in the Museum's history and explores how understanding of the past and present became more systematically organised, how voyages of discovery revealed new parts of the world and how archaeology, art history and ethnography became new rigorous disciplines. By displaying nearly 5,000 objects from the reserve collections of the Museum, along with substantial loans, particularly from the institutions that later sprang from it, the Natural History Museum and the British Library, the exhibition will enable visitors to examine Enlightenment collections and ideas as they were experienced at the time.

Providing a new understanding of the British Enlightenment, the King`s Library and its accompanying exhibition will also act as a magnificent introduction to the Museum as a whole. Nowhere else in the Museum will such a broad range of the objects from its collections be visible. At the same time their presentation in an unusual and historic manner will complement and contrast with the Museum's other galleries so that visitors, as they enter and enjoy this wonderful space, will be prompted to reflect on the way that our understanding of the world has changed over the last 250 years. The King`s Library (Room 1). Permanent exhibition.

Prehistory: Objects of Power - A new, permanent gallery exploring the creation of objects. The exhibition illustrates the ways in which prehistoric objects, both the mundane and the exceptional, were involved in the exercise of power and control from the earliest times up until the end of the European Bronze Age in 800 BC. For more information please visit www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk
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