International touring exhibitions and loans

Exhibitions tour internationally as a popular means of fulfilling the Museum's ambition to be a museum of the world for the world.

Through touring exhibitions and individual loans overseas, the  Museum loaned 1,925 objects to 104 venues outside the UK in 2007/8.

Exhibitions currently touring, due to tour and a selection of those which have toured recently:

The Ancient Olympic Games
The Shanghai Museum, China (1 May – 12 July 2008)
Hong Kong Heritage Museum (2 August – 24 November 2008)

Art and Empire: Treasures from Assyria
Museo Arqueológico Provincial de Alicante, Spain
(2 April – 30 September 2007)
Museum of Fine Art, Boston 
(15 September 2008 – 4 January 2009)

A New World: England’s First View of America
North Carolina Museum of History, Raleigh
(20 October 2007 – 14 January 2008)
Yale Center for British Art (6 March – 1 June 2008)
The Jamestown Settlement, Virginia (15 July – 15 October 2008)

The Body Beautiful in Ancient Greece
MARQ, Alicante, Spain (2 April – 13 October 2009)

Treasures of the World's Cultures
National Palace Museum, Taipei (12 February –  27 May 2007)
Hong Kong Museum of Art (14 September – 2 December 2007)
Royal British Columbia Museum, Victoria, Canada
(1 May – 30 September 2009)

Word into Art: Artists of the Modern Middle East
Dubai International Finance Centre (6 February – 30 April 2008)

Temples and Tombs: Treasures of Egyptian Art
Florida (December 2006 – March 2007)
North Carolina (April – July 2007)
New Mexico (November 2007 – February 2008)

Mummies: Death and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt
Bowers Museum, Santa Ana (January 2007 – April 2008)

Mummy: The Inside Story
Science Centre, Tokyo, Japan (October 2006 – February 2007)
Kobe City Museum, Kobe, Japan (March – June 2007)

International loans

The Museum sends many loans across the world to support the  work of other museums. In 2007/8 the Museum lent Iznik pottery to Kuala Lumpur, a Parmigianino etching to Munich, Jacobean  tiles to Belfast, Iranian finials to Paris, Egyptian statues to Ljubljana, and a 5th-century ivory casket showing the earliest known representation of the Passion narrative to the Kimbell Art Museum in Forth Worth.

Figures of Apollo and Aphrodite travelled to Paris and Athens for the international exhibition on the Greek sculptor Praxiteles. The Museum also made significant loans to Benin: Kings and Rituals shown in Paris, Vienna, Berlin and Chicago.

View a selection of current international exhibitions and loans

Image caption: The groundbreaking exhibition Word into Art: Artists of the Modern Middle East, showing contemporary art from across the Middle East toured to Dubai, where it was dramatically launched in the city centre.