Museums & Attractions

Life is short, and this artilce saved valuable time on this Earth.

Why is it that most London musuems are funded by the department of medeia culture and sport but in the provinces councils have to fund there own . yet another hidden london subsidy.

There is also the Florence Nightingale musuem which is really good

I'm looking for an exhibition or museum of old office equipment - does anyone know of anything?

£16 for an adult is an extortionate fee it should adopt the pricing of an English Heritage site after all it is part of our national heritage. Charge that to the tourists if you wish but not British citizens who contribute through taxes and allowing charities like this tax exemptions.

I agree with Edgar West. Several of my favourite museums have had tall the atmosphere taken away by modernisation. Most The Royal College of Surgeons has been completely sanitised and many of the exhibits have been removed whilst the Natural History Museum has been dumbed down so 4 year olds can understand it.

If you are interested in exploring London's museums with other like minded people, then join the London Cultureseekers Group - www.cultureseekers.org.
We meet up 3-4 times a month and explore museums, art galleries, visit historical buildings, the theatre and go on guided walks.
It's the best way to make friends whilst exploring London.

I visited the Clink Museum with a friend last year and we both agreed it was disappointing, with badly designed displays. Information was often difficult to read and there was too much repetition of the same material, as though nobody had considered the overall effect. Not good value for money. This is a shame, as it's a unique site in an interesting area.

The North Woolwich Old Station Museum closed in January 2009. The station building is boarded up, the yard behind has been redeveloped and the exhibits have been dispersed.

Found out today that where the Bramah museum was there is a hardware store. The museum closed a year ago!

Edgar West - It's not about 'vapid contemporary apology', it's about exhibiting objects with a better understanding of their significance. This is obviously more the case with anthropological objects than with anything involving natural history - the Victorians did a good job of physically acquiring objects but there was little if any genuine concern about their function or contemporary significance - it really was literally a 'treasure hunt'. With the prevalence of the internet being 'culturally poor' is becoming less and less of an issue (and in fact saying so is inaccurate - virtually all of the objects collected during the era of Empire are not 'British' at all, so it's not British culture that's being impovershed) , alterations in museums nowadays are made to convey that artifacts did - and still do - hold deep cultural importance as well as being beautiful, and this normally results in a need for compromise in display methods. Objects from natives here on the Northwest Coast are a great example of this - many of the masks they're world-famous for are in fact not meant to be seen unless being used for a dance, much less displayed openly behind glass. Hence you develop communication with the cultural owners of objects and as such alter display methods to enrich the functions of objects - instead of being permanently behind glass, natives might occasionally visit a museum and use those masks in ceremonial dances, for example.
It can get very complicated, but the short of it is that those changes you witness are genuinely meant to enrich the functions of museum collections rather than 'sterilize' them as might be interpreted. In the simplest terms, we simply know more now than they did then. In any case, there are certainly many places that continue to pay homage to British Victorian eccentricity (in many ways a museum-worthy subject of preservation in its own right), most notably the Sloane Museum.
I don't aim to berate you or anything like that, only to educate. I've been studying this kind of stuff a lot :)

The Wallace Collection is a great art museum that is free and near bond st tube.

The Huntarian and Soane's museums are pretty much opposite each other, and a 20-25 min walk from the British Museum. They make a great combination as they are both really unusual but in totally different ways! Around Lincoln's Inn are lots of historic buildings (the Inns of Court and so on) plus the fields themselves are a pleasant place to eat lunch and have a fairly upmarket cafe/restaurant.
They make a good combination for a day out in London and are themselves very close to Covent Garden for lunch/dinner.
They are my favourite London museums!

I agree with Erik. The Museum of Brands and Packaging is well worth a visit. It is a view of social history over the past 100 years or so by reference to everyday items such as food packaging, advertising styles etc. Educational and nostalgic. www.museumofbrands.com

Horniman Museum
Again took my niece there last summer and it was another museum she enjoyed, it has various exhibits, it also has lovely grounds to walk thru on a good day.. Has a basement fukllof aquariums, this museum is ideal for children as well as adult minds