King Charles I’s execution vest and 20,000 human remains are among the objects that need to be packed up as the Museum of London makes a daunting ￡250 million (US$297.21 million) move.
The museum tells the story of one of the world’s great cities through more than 6 million artifacts — the largest urban history collection in the world.
However, it has long been hampered by its location, tucked away among the glass towers of London’s ever-expanding financial center, the City.
Photo: AFP
When the building was unveiled in 1976, the Times reported that “Her Majesty, the Queen is opening the Museum of London today, if she can find the entrance.”
“We’ve been struggling with that,” museum director of content Finbarr Whooley said.
The museum is preparing to move to a giant disused market building in the capital’s “cultural mile,” with the formidable three-year task of relocating the items set to begin on Dec. 5.
Photo: AFP
“When you think about moving your own house, you think about packing up and moving, and the stress of that. You just take this and put it on steroids,” Whooley said.
“Some of those objects will be tiny, some of them will be monumental, literally,” he said. “But they will all need to be individually packed, individually numbered, recorded and then moved very carefully. We are approaching it with military precision.”
Some of the items are so large they were built into the current building, on a roundabout near St Paul’s Cathedral and the Brutalist towers of the Barbican Estate. At the other end of the scale are delicate objects, including the stained vest reputed to have been worn by Charles I when he was beheaded in 1649.
The 20,000 skeletal remains of historic Londoners also needs to be transported with care.
“We as an organization have to be incredibly respectful of the fact that these are all people who are Londoners,” Whooley said.
Despite the challenge, the museum decided to move to a more visitor-friendly location.
“With the tremendous success of the City of London, and the growth of all the corporate buildings, it means that I suppose we became almost an island, a cultural island,” Whooley said.
Although only a short walk away, the new location at Smithfield Market is in the heart of a new cultural center and is expected to “double or maybe triple our visitor figures.”
The museum would take over a currently derelict wing of a Victorian meat market, designed by Horace Jones, the same architect responsible for Tower Bridge.
“There are wonderful nooks and crannies. There are great vaults underground, where the trains used to come under, and bring in the meat,” Whooley said.
“One of the wonderful things... is that trains will run through the galleries,” he added. “There will be an opportunity to actually look at real-life trains passing through the museum in real time, so we think that will be huge.”
The new museum, set to open in 2026, is to follow the history of London from its earliest days through Roman habitation and seismic events such as the bubonic plague, the Great Fire of 1666, World War II and the modern day.
While excited about the new opportunities, he said the move was a “bittersweet” moment.
“As a curator, you build up a one-to-one relationship with your collection, you literally think of these as your old friends,” he said. “As you walk around the galleries, you walk around knowing at the back of your head that you’re seeing your old friends in this place, for the last time.”
The rivalry between Asia’s two biggest countries has extended into outer space. After India’s landing of its Chandrayaan-3 rover on the moon last month — becoming the first country to put a spacecraft near the lunar south pole and breaking China’s record for the southernmost lunar landing — a top Chinese scientist has said claims about the accomplishment are overstated. Ouyang Ziyuan (歐陽自遠), lauded as the father of China’s lunar exploration program, told the Chinese-language Science Times newspaper that the Chandrayaan-3 landing site, at 69 degrees south latitude, was nowhere close to the pole, defined as between 88.5 and 90 degrees. On Earth,
A cat wearing a black and yellow security vest strolls nonchalantly past security guards lined outside a Philippine office building waiting to receive instructions for their shift. Conan, a six-month-old stray, joined the security team of the Worldwide Corporate Center in the capital, Manila, several months ago. He is one of the lucky moggies unofficially adopted by security guards across the city, where thousands of cats live on the street. While the cats lack the security skills of dogs — and have a tendency to sleep on the job — their cuteness and company have endeared them to bored security guards working 12-hour
NEW ENERGY: Mark Lambert, the next deputy assistant secretary for China and Taiwan, is to head China House, which has been criticized for slowing policymaking Washington on Friday named veteran diplomat Mark Lambert as its top China policy official at the US Department of State at a time when ties between the two strategic rivals remain fraught over issues including Taiwan, trade and US curbs on Beijing’s access to US technology. Lambert is to be deputy assistant secretary for China and Taiwan, and is to head the Office of China Coordination, informally known as China House, the State Department said in a release. The division was created late last year to unify and better coordinate China policies across regions and issues, but has faced criticism for adding
TEMPORARY HITCH? Biden said the US ‘cannot ... allow American support for Ukraine to be interrupted,’ and he expects House Speaker McCarthy to come up with a solution The threat of a federal government shutdown suddenly lifted late on Saturday as US President Joe Biden signed a temporary funding bill to keep agencies open with little time to spare after the US Congress rushed to approve the bipartisan deal. The package dropped aid to Ukraine, a White House priority opposed by a growing number of Republican lawmakers, but increased federal disaster assistance by US$16 billion, meeting Biden’s full request. The bill would fund the US government until Nov. 17. After chaotic days of turmoil in the US House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy abruptly abandoned demands for steep spending cuts
RSS