Free exhibition in the reopened Old General Herbarium at the Natural History Museum, exploring what nature has done to us.
Nature and Us opened at the Natural History Museum on Wednesday 16 September and runs until March 2028. It's a temporary exhibition that takes over the Old General Herbarium, one of the original galleries in the museum's Grade I listed Waterhouse building. The room has been closed to the public for over 80 years, so it's a bit of a rarity to actually step inside it.
Before the war, the space served as an osteology and mammals gallery. After the original herbarium was bomb-damaged during the Second World War, it was repurposed to house the museum's botanical collections, and it's spent the last eight decades as a working herbarium filled with plant specimens from around the world. You can still see the original wooden herbarium cabinets lining the walls, alongside an eclectic mix of objects, models and tools used to collect and share knowledge about nature. The exhibition flips the usual lens, asking what nature has done to us rather than what we've done to it.
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The reopening is part of NHM150, the museum's building transformation that will open a new or revitalised gallery each year leading up to its 150th anniversary in 2031. You'll find it on the second floor of the Central Building, near South Kensington tube. It's free to visit, but you need to book a free time slot online in advance.
