Renaissance Globe Event: Madness of Magellan

Renaissance Globe Event: Madness of Magellan

Family Friendly / Drop-in

Ferdinand Magellan’s expedition of 1519 was the first to circumnavigate the globe, although Magellan himself did not make it all the way back alive. Taking this audacious global voyage of discovery as inspiration, visitors to the Madness of Magellan event took part in a set of activities all themed around historical world exploration and navigation.

As well as handling navigational instruments and playing the Mariner’s Trail board game, visitors were challenged to explore the Museum’s galleries searching for objects and their origin: could anyone find something from each continent of the world?

After writing a short description and making a little drawing of their objects, each was pinned on to the giant globe at its place of origin and the whole mini-collection was strung together by a coloured thread. The substantial concentration of objects in Europe clearly reveals a lot about the complexion of the Museum’s collection.