The new London Museum based at the historic Smithfield market in Farringdon— one of the biggest capital museum developments in the UK capital in recent years—will open to the public on 28 November.
The cost of the new museum has risen to £437m in total (the budget was set at £337m in 2019). The Greater London Authority, under mayor Sadiq Khan, has given £95m, while the City of London Corporation’s total funding amount for the new museum is £222m.
A range of private foundations and sponsors including Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Goldsmiths’ Foundation, the Linbury Trust and The National Lottery Heritage Fund are also backing the project, says a museum spokesperson.
The institution, formerly based at London Wall near the Barbican Centre until December 2022, was previously called the Museum of London. Described as “one of Europe’s largest cultural infrastructure projects”, the new complex is designed by Stanton Williams and Asif Khan in partnership with the conservation architects Julian Harrap.
A visualisation of the permanent Past Time galleries, located below ground on Roman street level
© Secchi Smith. Courtesy London Museum
The site will open in two stages: the formerly derelict Victorian General Market dating from the 1880s, home to the museum’s permanent galleries, will open in November while the 1960s Poultry Market, which houses the museum’s learning centre, temporary exhibition spaces and collection stores, will launch in 2028. The adjacent buildings will be connected by an enclosed avenue.
The ground floor of the General Market space will house Our Time, a hub for performances, talks and festivals. Permanent galleries will be located in an underground space where “content will range from Roman relics to dress, vehicles to art and photography, and include the exquisite Cheapside Hoard presented in the Goldsmiths’ Gallery,” says a statement. Meanwhile a live train line will run alongside the subterranean gallery space, which was once a vast goods depot for the Great Northern Railway.
One of Banksy’s famed animal-themed works—a police sentry box emblazoned with a shoal of piranhas—will go on show at the new museum, along with the diving trunks worn by Tom Daley at the 2012 London Olympics and the silk vest worn by Charles I when he was beheaded in 1649.
