TWO CENTURIES HERE, is a new multi-space exhibition in the heart of central London, celebrating 200 years of ground-breaking scientific research, historical discoveries, artistic innovation and educational impact at the capital’s first university – University College London (UCL).

Through photography, objects, paintings, artefacts, and storytelling, the exhibition invites visitors to explore and discuss UCL’s rich history, influence and role in society, and collectively imagine what the future could look like.

This includes curious and fascinating objects from two of London’s most important museums, The Petrie Museum of Egyptian and Sudanese Archaeology and UCL Grant Museum of Zoology, alongside artworks from the UCL Art Museum and rare items from UCL’s historic and scientific collections, not usually open to the public.

The exhibition features an eclectic range of objects, illustrating two centuries of curiosity, creativity and discovery. See The Grant Museum’s iconic Jar of Moles, the Crookes tube that led to the UK’s first clinical X-ray, a rocket nose cone linked to UCL’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory, the original test tubes used by Britains’ first Nobel Prize winner William Ramsay in his discovery of the noble gases, paintings and sketches from some of London’s first contemporary female artists including Winifred Knights and Amy Nimir, and the Shabti of King Taharqa, one of hundreds of important Egyptian and Sudanese funerary figurines at the Petrie Museum, one of the most important collections of Ancient Egyptian artefacts in the UK.

The exhibition also includes more challenging objects such as the Rudolf Martin Eye Colour Scale, that was used to categorise the eye-colour and assumed racial origins of Jewish migrant children in 1920s London, which now helps students to confront the legacy of eugenics. Other objects demonstrate the birth of electronics, advances in medical surgery and revelations from Nobel Prize winning thinkers of which UCL has 33.