'Ice Age' at The British Museum

Visitors at The British Museum can discover masterpieces from the last Ice Age drawn from across Europe in a new groundbreaking show slated to be held in February 2013.

Created by artists with modern minds like our own, this is a great opportunity to view the world's oldest known sculptures, drawings and portraits. These exceptional pieces will be presented alongside modern works by Henry Moore, Mondrian and Matisse, illustrating the fundamental human desire to communicate and make art as a way of understanding ourselves and our place in the world.

Ice Age art was created between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago and many of the pieces are made of mammoth ivory and reindeer antler. They show skilful, practised artists experimenting with perspectives, scale, volumes, light and movement, as well as seeking knowledge through imagination, abstraction and illusion.

One of the most beautiful pieces in the exhibition is a 23,000-year-old sculpture of an abstract figure from Lespugue, France. Picasso was fascinated with this figure and it influenced his 1930s sculptural works. Although an astonishing amount of time divides us from these Ice Age artists, such evocative pieces show that creativity and expression have remained remarkably similar across thousands of years.

The British Museum opened to the public on 15 January 1759. Its origins lie in the will of the physician, naturalist and collector, Sir Hans Sloane (1660–1753). Over his lifetime, Sloane collected more than 71,000 objects which he wanted to be preserved intact after his death. So he bequeathed the whole collection to King George II for the nation in return for a payment of £20,000 to his heirs.

During the beginning of the twenty-first century, the Museum has continued to expand its public facilities with the opening of four new permanent galleries in 2008-9, namely Chinese ceramics; Clocks and watches; Europe AD 1050–1540; and The Tomb-chapel of Nebamun: Ancient Egyptian life and death. It’s working on an ambitious World Conservation and Exhibitions Centre.