Museums - Captain Cook Birthplace Museum

The Captain Cook Birthplace Museum preserves the legacy of Captain James Cook (1728–1779), one of the world's most famous and influential navigators, who, among other achievements, made three historic voyages to the Pacific in the 1760s and 1770s that initiated European contact with Australia and the Hawaiian Islands. The museum was opened on October 28, 1978 – the 250th anniversary of Cook’s birth – in a purpose-built building near the site of Cook’s birthplace cottage in Stewart Park, Marton, Middlesbrough. Since opening it has undergone a series of refurbishments. The Captain Cook Birthplace Museum forms part of the Middlesbrough Museums & Galleries Service along with its sister venue, the Dorman Museum, where most of its reserve collections are stored.
The museum's collections, a portion of which are on loan from the National Maritime Museum, contain personal items relating to James Cook and his family, manuscripts and archives, scientific material from Cook's voyages, nautical artifacts, replica vessels, and ethnographic art objects from a variety of world regions and cultures. The Museum Service's collection of tribal artifacts comprises around 1,500 items from Australia, New Zealand, and elsewhere in Oceania, as well as material from North America, the Arctic, East Asia, and South Africa. The most notable collection is of Aboriginal artifacts, some of which were collected by G. L. Dorman and Dr. Weatherill, the remainder being donations from the Aboriginal Arts Board of Australia. At the time of their donation in 1980, they constituted the largest collection of Aboriginal material outside Australia.