Our Director's Message for our Winter Reopening

A message from our Director, Luke Syson:

We were extremely relieved to hear that Cambridgeshire has emerged from lockdown into Tier 2, because that means that we can open to the public again. But we have made one important change. For the foreseeable future, we will open from Wednesday to Sundays inclusive, and will now close not just on Mondays as before but also on Tuesdays. We will of course be maintaining all the safety measures we have already put in place to ensure that we can operate as a site that is as Covid-secure as possible. We want you to feel safe and comfortable as you enjoy our great collection in our beautiful galleries. You can prebook your free timed tickets here.

I am delighted to give you advance notice of our next exhibition in the Mellon and Adeane Galleries The Human Touch: Making Art, Leaving Traces. Planned as a key ingredient of our Sensual/Virtual season, its opening was delayed by six months because of the Covid19 pandemic. This period has made us therefore extraordinarily alive to the preciousness and the dangers of touch, making this exploration of our most fundamental sense still more timely and resonant. The exhibition opens on 6 January, and free tickets for January and February can be booked. To give you a taste for what the exhibition will contain, we are running a social media advent calendar during December which will use Touch as its central theme.

During December, we also have a number of temporary displays and an exhibition for you to enjoy.  If you liked our recent series of podcasts - In My Mind’s Eye - as much as I did, you will want to see the display we have created with the artist Issam Kourbaj. The new eye idols Kourbaj carved, while blindfolded, from Aleppo soap evoke the ancient eye idols from Tell Brak with which they can be seen at the Fitz: Don't Wash Your Hands: Neither Light Agrees To Enter The Eyes Nor Air The Lungs.

Our Café and Courtyard Shop will welcome you back to the Museum with open arms. We will be serving light lunches and festive treats for you to enjoy, and our Shop has Christmas cards and gifts galore for all ages and tastes. If you cannot visit the Museum in person, you can shop online at The Fitzwilliam Museum – Curating Cambridge; every purchase you provides precious support for the Fitzwilliam Museum and our work here.

We hope to see you very soon.

Opening Hours: 10:00 - 17:00 Wednesday - Saturday and 12:00 - 17:00 on Sunday.

We will be open on Tuesday 22 December before our Christmas break (closed 24 December – 1 January inclusive).

Image: Snowy landscape at Eragny with an apple tree by Camille Pissarro PD.974-1963

1 December 2020