Mary Anning: Fossil Hunter runs at Dorset Museum in Dorchester from 30 January to 2 May 2027, curated by Tracy Chevalier, with her only known portrait on show.
Dorset Museum & Art Gallery in Dorchester will open an exhibition on Mary Anning, the Lyme Regis fossil hunter, on 30 January 2027. Mary Anning: Fossil Hunter runs until 2 May 2027, 180 years after her death, and has been guest curated by the novelist Tracy Chevalier.
The museum confirmed the dates to The Dorset Post on Friday. The details below come from its exhibition press release and its exhibition page.
What will be on show
The exhibition is built around the two places Mary Anning spent her life: the beach where she hunted and the town of Lyme Regis where she lived and sold what she found. The museum says it will include:
- fossils found by Mary and others, and a cast of the first ichthyosaur skull, found when Mary was 12 with her older brother Joseph;
- plesiosaur specimens and drawings of the first plesiosaur she found, in 1824;
- the only known portrait of Mary, which also shows her spaniel Tray, who was later killed in a landslide a few feet from her;
- Henry De la Beche’s watercolour Duria Antiquior, A More Ancient Dorset (1830) and the lithograph of it, which he sold as prints to raise money for her;
- letters and drawings that, the museum says, show “Mary’s character and conflicts”;
- a recreated Jurassic beach where visitors look for hidden fossils, made by students from Arts University Bournemouth;
- a recreation of the Anning family shop, where visitors can handle the kinds of fossils the family found and sold to tourists;
- Denise Dutton’s original maquette for the Mary Anning statue in Lyme Regis, with a video of Evie, the schoolgirl who started the Mary Anning Rocks campaign for it at the age of 11 in 2018. The statue was unveiled in May 2022.
Claire Dixon, the museum’s Executive Director, said some of the museum’s own collection going on show “have not been displayed before”, and will sit “alongside internationally significant Dorset artefacts from national institutions”.
Mary Anning’s story, as the museum tells it
Mary Anning lived from 1799 to 1847. The release describes her as a figure “familiar” on the Lyme Regis shore in her lifetime who has only recently been widely recognised as a skilled palaeontologist. She started going on to the beach at five or six with her father, Richard, an amateur collector.
Around 1811 or 1812 she and Joseph found a complete ichthyosaur and sold it to a local landowner. The museum says it was the first specimen of its kind to be scientifically studied and described, and it ended up at the Natural History Museum in London. Her complete plesiosaur followed in 1824.
She did more than dig. The museum says she cleaned, sold and studied her finds and came “to understand their anatomy as well as any university-educated man”, yet the men who bought her fossils often left her name out of their papers. The Geological Society of London refused to admit her, and did not allow women to become Fellows until 1908. She died in poverty, of breast cancer, in 1847.
The curator
Tracy Chevalier wrote Girl with a Pearl Earring and Remarkable Creatures, a novel about Mary Anning, and is a trustee of Dorset Museum & Art Gallery. She said:
“I do a lot of research for my novels since they are mainly set in other times and places. If possible, I like to do what my characters do, as then it’s easier to understand it and describe it. So, I tried painting when I wrote Pearl Earring; needlepoint for A Single Thread; glass beads for The Glassmaker. For Remarkable Creatures I spent many hours looking for fossils on the beaches near Lyme Regis, following in Mary’s footsteps.”
“In the space of a few years, Mary Anning has transformed from local heroine to national treasure. She is a firm fixture on primary school curricula, a statue in Lyme Regis has been raised for her, and she was named as one of the 10 most important women in science by the Royal Society. It’s high time the nation celebrated with an exhibition devoted to Mary, and I’m honoured to be part of the team bringing her life and work to life.”
Claire Dixon said:
“It is really exciting to be working with Tracy Chevalier to bring such an important female figure to life, whose work was invisible for so long. We will be able to showcase our own collections, some of which have not been displayed before, alongside internationally significant Dorset artefacts from national institutions. Our exhibitions are a great way to encourage visitors to keep coming back to Dorset Museum & Art Gallery. The fascinating story, important new research findings and interactives created by Arts University Bournemouth will come together to ensure there is something for everyone.”
The museum is raising money towards the exhibition; details are on its exhibition page.
What it means for you
- When: 30 January to 2 May 2027, daily 10am to 5pm, last entry 4pm.
- Where: the Special Exhibitions Gallery on the ground floor of Dorset Museum & Art Gallery, High West Street, Dorchester DT1 1XA.
- Cost: no separate ticket. The exhibition is included in museum entry, which today costs £13.95 online or £15.50 on the door for adults, and £11.70 online or £13 on the door for 16 to 25 year olds (prices checked 23 October 2026). Each covers a year of visits, so a ticket bought for the current shows will still get you in. Children up to 15 go free with an adult, as do members.
- Before then: Dressed for Duty: Fashion, Function and the British Army, from The Keep Military Museum, is at the museum until 13 December 2026. The museum won gold and two silvers at this week’s Dorset Tourism Awards.
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