Historic galleries to reopen

Never before displayed items from the University's collections are to go on display in the Octagon and Flaxman galleries, the historic heart of UCL, as the galleries reopen this week following a bold transformation. In the upper Flaxman Gallery, the interior of the Wilkins Building's famous dome, John Flaxman's plaster study St Michael Overcoming Satan (1819-24) now stands on a glass plinth above an oculus (a circular opening in the floor or ceiling). On the surrounding walls, below the dome's windows, plaster reliefs from Flaxman's studio are set into the wall. Visitors in the Octagon gallery below can look up through the oculus, seeing the reliefs from new angles. The Octagon Gallery itself has undergone a more radical transformation; new cases, animations and interactive screens will display treasures from the University's collections, communicating complex ideas by showing historic items in new ways. The Octagon's first exhibition,  Model Translations , is of objects - some never displayed before - from the collections. The items come from art, anthropology, archaeology, engineering, pathology and zoology collections and record encounters and explorations between scholars and the natural and made environment.