First Time Out - January to August 2011

First Time Out was a collaboration between five London museums including Kew, Horniman Museum, Natural History Museum, Science Museum and Wellcome Collection. In First Time Out, you saw treasures from different museum collections that had never been displayed before.

About the exhibition

First Time Out explored the relationship between objects and interpretation. Objects from each museum were on display at participating institutions for six-week periods, and interpreted differently at each one. But which story was told?

Objects tell us about past environments, cultures, innovations and events. But they can also tell different stories depending on your perspective. What happens when you take something from one museum and ask experts from another to write the story? This is something we found out during First Time Out. 

Visit First Time Out at Kew Gardens | Help Kew look after our art and heritage