The exhibition explores six different locations, marked on the map below. Roll over a site to find out a bit more and click through to an image gallery relating to dirt and that location at a specific point in time.

The Home: Delft, 1683
Visitors to the Netherlands during the 17th century frequently expressed surprise at the amount of energy the Dutch devoted to cleaning their homes. Contemporary art shows housewives and their maidservants maintaining a strict regime of sweeping, scouring and polishing interiors that already appear spotless. In 1683, while painters were depicting this fastidious approach to cleanliness, the Delft-born scientist (and draper by trade) Antonie van Leeuwenhoek became the first person to see bacteria, using lenses he had ground to examine the quality of cloth.

The Street: Soho, 1854
In September 1854, London was hit by a devastating cholera outbreak. Over the course of ten days, 500 people died in the vicinity of Broad Street, Soho, and the neighbourhood was soon deserted by those who were able to leave. The epidemic's intensity drove the officials of St James's parish to order an investigation into the horrifying sickness, which struck so rapidly that victims often died in a matter of hours. In a city notorious for its stinking river, gigantic dust heaps and underclass of scavengers, most Victorians believed that disease was caused by bad air or 'miasma'.

The Hospital: Glasgow, 1867
When Joseph Lister arrived at Glasgow Royal Infirmary in 1861, he would certainly have noticed the stench. The hospital was a filthy place, and rates of infection were so high that patients presenting with broken limbs or compound fractures had a 90 per cent chance of amputation. Those who underwent procedures successfully were at great risk of dying from postoperative 'ward fever'. Six years later, Lister undertook the first successful operation using carbolic as an antiseptic, an event that would have a revolutionary impact on the future of surgery.

The Museum: Dresden, 1930
Between May and October 1911, more than five million people flocked to Dresden, Germany, to visit the First International Hygiene Exhibition. Its many pavilions combined new technologies and lifelike displays to educate the public about healthcare and human anatomy. Its success led to the founding of the Deutsches Hygiene-Museum, which in 1930 opened its own purpose-built home - an architectural monument to rationality and transparency in modern medical science.

The Community: New Delhi and Kolkata, 2011
In many parts of India, inadequate sewage systems mean that much of the population use dry latrines, which require continuous cleaning. Despite government attempts to outlaw 'manual scavenging', recent figures indicate that more than one million people still scrape an existence by clearing human waste from these facilities, often by hand. Conventionally, these 'scavengers' are Dalits (the 'broken people', formerly known as 'untouchables'). Paid a pittance and treated with contempt, their predicament is a symptom of the legacy of the Hindu caste system.

The Land: Fresh Kills, 2030
Until 2001 when it closed, Fresh Kills on Staten Island was the world's largest municipal landfill site. Reputedly visible from space, it was almost three times the size of New York's Central Park, with a peak taller than the Statue of Liberty.  At the height of operations in the 1980s, the site was receiving around 29 000 tonnes of rubbish a day - yet many of the city's inhabitants barely knew of its existence. At present, the site is undergoing a transformation: by 2030, Fresh Kills will open to the public, its landscapes redesigned for hikers, cyclists and ball-players, its native plants and wildlife restored.