Diverse museums open this summer

Three new but very different museums have opened this summer around the world. First to open in June was the Sharjah Museum of Islamic Civilisation, housed in a traditional Middle Eastern souq or indoor market. The museum in the United Arab Emirates contains over 5,000 artefacts from across the Islamic world arranged in themed galleries, from a Faith exhibition to a Science and Technology section. The Museum of the American Cocktail, meanwhile, opens on July 21st in New Orleans. Located near the historic French Quarter, the museum includes 200 years of cocktail memorabilia, including Prohibition-era material. Limited visitor access is also now available at the National Museum of Computing, in Bletchley Park, the home of British Second World War code-breaking in Buckinghamshire. Recognised as the birthplace of electronic computing, the venue aims to restore and display computer systems, such as the Colossus system used to read German ciphers.