The Museum Of The Moon

Hexham Abbey 29 September – 11 November. £3 Adult / £1 Child

The Museum of the Moon is an exhibition that moves from place to place, usually between historic and important places. This mock-up of the moon can be viewed in multiple contexts if someone is patient enough to keep visiting it in various locations.

Luke Jerram’s Museum of the Moon actually has several Moons all with their own exhibition schedule, they use photography of the moon taken from NASA and are scaled at 5km per 1cm of surface on the installation itself. Everywhere that the Moon goes, it is usually very popular and results in varied responses from those who see it.

In Hexham Abbey, as with various other cathedrals, the Moon has been hung in the crossing between the Nave, Choir, and Transcepts meaning it can be viewed from multiple angles and seen from more than three-quarters of the inside of the church itself. As seen in the first photograph, when I popped in, the nave of the Abbey was extremely busy with quite a lot of people viewing from there and taking photographs in front of the moon.

It is my opinion that the best view of the moon available within Hexham Abbey is the view from the top of the Night Stair. You can view the moon from ever so slightly above as well as get a feel for how the installation integrates with the architecture of the space within which it is displayed. There are information boards dotted around the moon which point to the locations on the surface of events in the history of the moon such as moon landings.

Hexham Abbey is worth a visit anyway, not only for the moon. It is an amazing place with a crypt dating back to the 6th century AD; one of the largest selections of medieval panel paintings that are still in situ in the UK, and also it contains the Ogle Chantry.