The Powell-Cotton Museum was founded by Victorian explorer and hunter, Percy Powell-Cotton (1866–1940), whose passion for collecting began during a world tour in 1889.
Inspired by his travels, he began assembling a wide-ranging collection of natural history specimens, cultural objects and personal souvenirs, many of which are still on display today in Quex House and across the Powell-Cotton Museum galleries.
During the late Victorian era, it was common for gentlemen of Percy’s class to travel and hunt. His expeditions took him from India to East Africa, where he collected both animal specimens and cultural artefacts through interactions with the people and communities he met and employed. He was later joined on two trips to Angola by two of his daughters, Diana and Antoinette Powell-Cotton, who also contributed to the Museum’s collections.
In recent years, we have added to our knowledge of Percy as the creator of the Museum. We recognise that many of the Museum’s material culture objects were collected during the colonial period, and not all stories have been fully told.
Through partnership projects with communities from which the collections originated, and by revisiting Percy’s detailed diaries and field notes, we are working to better understand the provenance of these collections.
These collaborations help us to share richer, more inclusive histories, amplifying voices that were often left out of the Museum’s original narratives.
Today, we use the collection to support research into the natural world, biodiversity and social cultures. Working with community partners, the galleries are gradually being revitalised with fresh interpretation, bringing to the fore the objects themselves, their significance, the stories of their original owners and the communities to which they belonged.
