Curious Creatures: Stones and Bones

Curious Creatures: Stones and Bones opened at The Herbert Art Gallery & Museum on Saturday 11 July 2026, and it's staying put until July 2028. It's one of the museum's new summer exhibitions, which means you've got plenty of time to fit it in if you can't make it this month.

The whole thing is built around the museum's own natural sciences collection, so it's not a touring show brought in from elsewhere. It brings together a wide range of specimens from across the museum's stores: tiny insects, mighty mammals, sea creatures, and rocks from outer space. The title gives it away — it's about the things that remain after a creature is gone, the stones and bones that tell the story of what came before. Seeing them all in one room lets you compare the scale of it, from the smallest bug to the biggest beast.

It's not the only new thing on at the Herbert this summer, either. Curious Creatures sits alongside Palaeoverse: Dig Into the Dawn of Time and Beneath the Waves, so if you're in the mood for natural history, you can knock out all three in one go. There's no set tour or timed entry to worry about, so you just drop in whenever the museum is open and take your own time with it.

One thing that's worth knowing is that the museum sets aside separate meeting and wellbeing spaces, so if you're going with a group, there's a place to gather, and if you need a moment to yourself, there's a spot to take a break. Admission is included with the general entry price, so you're not paying extra to see it.