History lesson

"We're not sticking to safe subjects, we're striking out into new territory and we're being a little controversial - exactly as a university museum should do," says Timothy Potts, director of Cambridge's Fitzwilliam Museum, anticipating the arrival of Endless Forms: Charles Darwin, Natural Science and the Visual Arts.

The exhibition (16 June-4 October) is the centrepiece of the Fitzwilliam's contribution to the University of Cambridge's 800th anniversary. Endless Forms, organised by the Fitzwilliam in association with the Yale Center for British Art in the US, will be the first exhibition to demonstrate the impact Darwin's theories had on art in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

"It's the most ambitious exhibition, logistically and financially, that we've ever done," says Potts. "It's also the most innovative. It's taking a subject that most people - and, in a sense, even we - didn't know existed, because that's how new the research is."

Town and gown

Once the province of the gown crowd, Cambridge University's museums are today welcoming a broader audience. Eight university museums are open to the public and all are free: the Fitzwilliam Museum; Kettle's Yard; the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology; the Museum of Classical Archaeology; the Museum of Zoology; the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences; the Whipple Museum of the History of Science; and the Scott Polar Research Institute.

In total, more than half a million visitors passed through the museums in 2007-08, attracted by contemporary research, rich collections and exhibitions.

Liz Hide, university museums development officer, supports all eight museums. Backed by Renaissance in the Regions funding, she works on collaborative projects and funding applications to develop new initiatives.

Currently, the museums depend on a mix of university, public and private funding. The museum directors answer to the university, but have the creative freedom to pursue their own programming.

Hide sees the 800th anniversary as a timely way to increase collaboration: "We have a grant of about £20,000 from the university's funds to put on a programme of activities throughout the year. We're supporting it with Renaissance funding as well. We're aiming to consolidate the audiences we've been building over the last three years by developing community links and widening the mu-seums' appeal."

Generating funds to support the university's work is another key aspect of the 800th anniversary campaign. "That's very relevant in the museums, where many of us are on project funding," says Hide. "Every strategic move is coloured by: 'Will we be here? Will we be able to do that?'"

Special events during the 800th anniversary include Twilight at the Museums trails (held last month and again in November), where families explore the museums by torchlight during early evening openings. Plans are also in place for further music evenings at the museums and a Museums Fair on 2 May.

"We hope to include all the local museums in the Museums Fair," says Hide. "Although it's showcasing the university museums, we're aiming to show that we're part of a bigger picture. We want the public to come and see what we do.

"There will be craft activities, object handling and costumed characters. We're hoping to run a museum trading cards activity, based on top trumps, to highlight the university's outstanding collections."

Open to all

Hide is using the 800th anniversary to tell audiences that "the museums aren't just for the university people, they're for everybody. We want to show local people that they have internationally important and diverse collections on their doorstep. The museums are one of the few places where you can come onto university premises freely. That opening up is important in this 800th year, as well as any other year."

Potts agrees and says the anniversary is "an opportunity for the world outside of Cambridge to appreciate how the museums' value derives from their deep roots in the university, both intellectually and physically.

"The work that's done here, particularly on an area like Darwin, is a large part of why we can do an exhibition like Endless Forms. But what we do transcends the fact of us being a university museum."

"Exhibitions like this are of national and international significance," adds Potts. "We've had over 50,000 people through the show we've just closed on ancient gold work, From the Land of the Golden Fleece. That's a very good attendance for a city like Cambridge. It goes way beyond the people who would see themselves as being academically inclined."

Similarly, the museums can reach out to different groups across the university, according to Kettle's Yard director, Michael Harrison.

"Cambridge is a collegiate university. It has its college communities, where people get together. It has its faculties and departments, where people within their own speciality get together.

"But there are comparatively few places of common ground where people meet across disciplines, and where that dialogue opens up to a far broader public. We can provide that crossroads."

The interdisciplinary fellowship at Kettle's Yard is a case in point. "Our interdisciplinary fellow is charged with knocking on people's doors at the university, finding out what they're doing, seeking common ground, and making connections between the sciences and humanities," says Harrison.

"This kicked off last year with Beyond Measure, an exhibition exploring how the language of geometry is used by artists, astronomers, surgeons, scientists, musicians and architects.

"We want to develop this and make the most of being in Cambridge," says Harrison. "We want to make connections with other areas of human interest, so that people who don't think a modern art gallery is for them will find their way in."

Kettle's Yard bubbles

For the 800th anniversary, Kettle's Yard is paying tribute to HS "Jim" Ede, its founder and the first curator of modern art at the Tate in the 1920s and 1930s.

"We're taking Kettle's Yard to Tate Britain," says Harrison. From 9 May to 14 June, an exhibition at Tate Britain will feature new commissions and highlights from the collection, as well as tracing Kettle's Yard's story from its foundation to today.

Back in Cambridge, Kettle's Yard hosts the Roundhouse of International Spirits until 15 March. The exhibition focuses on the artists - including Hans Arp, Raffael Benazzi, Julius Bissier, Ben Nicholson, Hans Richter, Mark Tobey and Italo Valenti - who were living in the Ticino region of Switzerland from the late 1950s to the early 1970s.

David Ward: Slow Time will follow on from March to May, and is the result of a collaboration with the John Hansard Gallery at the University of Southampton.

Ultimately, the uniqueness of university museums is that they are "embedded in an environment where research and teaching is happening all the time, and the collections are key to that," says Hide.

"I like to think that when people come, as well as experiencing the collections, they experience a little of what the university is all about."

Juliana Gilling is a freelance journalist.