Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales

Who is smiling on the newest roundhouse in Wales, today? Dafydd and his construction team step back after months of work to celebrate at our mini and informal opening of the latest Moel y Gaer roundhouse. They are congratulated. I've formulated a ritual for the opening. Thanks for joining us at our special event, we all hope you enjoyed following the history of the roundhouse.

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The art cart starts this saturday (31st July). Come and make a paper flower ring!

We've almost finished the roundhouse. Dafydd and the team have thatched the roof and as you can see we've experimented with the design by creating a small vent for the smoke. I hope this will work but time will tell when we light our first fire! I need to limewash the interiors and then we're all done. We will be celebrating all the hard work this Saturday. If you are around join us at 3pm for the official opening in the 'Celtic Village'. Thanks to everyone for their support and interest in this project over the last four months and to the volunteers, Dylan Hammond and Lauren Parfitt, who have helped us.

We’ve just finished setting up the exhibition ‘Biodiversity - Who Cares?’ in the Main Hall at National Museum Cardiff. It’s been a great opportunity for us to show off some more of the beautiful botanical models from our stored collections. The models have been skilfully crafted from beeswax, but you might mistake them for real plants when you first look at them. With around 1000 models in the collection to choose from, our only problem has been deciding which ones to display!

The exhibition has been created by the BioSyB Dept as a contribution to the International Year of Biodiversity. The exhibition looks at some of the ways in which we can help reduce the loss of biodiversity. Look out for this touring exhibition at other Amgueddfa Cymru venues during the rest of the year.

Annette Townsend

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Michael Houlihan, the departing Director General of Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales, reflected on his time as head of the organization by delivering a lecture at National Museum Cardiff on Wednesday 14 July 2010.

After seven years in this key role, Mr Houlihan will be leaving in the coming weeks to take up his new post as Chief Executive of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales announced earlier this week that David Anderson, Director of Learning and Interpretation at the Victoria and Albert Museum, has been appointed as his replacement.

To read the lecture in its entirety, please click here

Investigation Results 2006-2010

The ‘Spring Bulbs for Schools’ project allows 1000s of schools scientists to work with Amgueddfa Cymru-National Museum Wales to investigate and understand climate change.

Since October 2005, school scientists across Wales have been keeping weather records and noting when their flowers open, as part of a long-term study looking at the effects of temperature on spring bulbs.

See Professor Plant's reports attached or download the spreadsheet to study the trends for yourself!

Many Thanks

Professor Plant

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Thanks to everyone who came to our brand new art club. We were looking at nature and printmaking and made some beautiful pictures with potato prints, leaf prints and leaf rubbings.

Our next art club is on saturday 4th September from 2pm until 3.15pm, places must be booked in advance so please phone our education department on 029 2057 3424 as soon as possible.

Art Club allows families to spend more time exploring different art and craft techniques, the September art club will continue to look at nature, but i haven't decided exactly what we'll be doing yet!

Meanwhile, our regular drop-in summer art cart sessions will be running throughout August... more information to come.