The Horniman Museum and Gardens is a museum in Forest Hill, London, England. Commissioned in 1898, it opened in 1901 and was designed by Charles Harrison Townsend in the Modern Style.
It is a non-departmental public body of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and is constituted as a company and registered charity under English law.
History
The museum was founded in 1901 by Frederick John Horniman. Frederick had inherited his father's Horniman's Tea business, which by 1891 had become the world's biggest
tea trading business.
The proceeds from the business allowed Horniman to indulge his lifelong passion for collecting, and which after travelling extensively had some 30,000 items in his various collections, covering natural history, cultural artefacts and musical instruments.
In 1911, an additional building to the west of the main building, originally containing a lecture hall and library, was donated by Frederick Horniman's son Emslie Horniman. This was also designed by Townsend. A new extension, opened in 2002, was designed by Allies and Morrison.
In 2007, the museum held the Walking with Beasts Exhibition. The exhibition featured life-sized models of extinct animals featured in the BBC series of the same name, such as Smilodon and the Woolly Mammoth.
The museum won the Art Fund's Museum of the Year award in 2022.
Collections
The Horniman specialises in anthropology, natural history and musical instruments
and has a collection of 350,000 objects. The
ethnography and music collections have Designated status. One of its most famous exhibits is the large collection of stuffed animals. It also has an
aquarium noted for its .
Floor directory
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Under 5s Book Zone
Natural History Balcony
Horniman Highlight Objects
3 Apostle Clock, Germany | Main Entrance
CUE Building
Conservatory
Café
Shop
Education Centre
Hands On Base
Natural History Gallery
Balcony Gallery
Environment Room
Horniman Highlight Objects
1 Sandpainting, America
2 Walrus, Canada | World Gallery
Temporary Exhibition Gallery
Music Gallery
Gallery Square
Security Reception from London Road
One Gallery closed for redevelopment
Horniman Highlight Objects
4 French Horn, England
5 Carlton Drum Kit, England
6 Torture Chair, Unknown
7 Kali with Shiva Figure, India
8 Benin Bronzes, Nigeria | Aquarium |
Transport connections
Gardens
The museum is set in of gardens, which include the following features:
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A Grade II listed conservatory from 1894 which was moved from Hornimans' family house in Croydon to the present site in the 1980s.
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A bandstand from 1912
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An enclosure for small animals
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A Butterfly House
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A nature trail
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An ornamental garden
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Plants for materials, medicines, and foods and dyes
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A sound garden with large musical instruments for playing
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A new building, the Pavilion, for working on materials that are outside of the collections, such as from the gardens.
The gardens are also Grade II listed on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England.
Mosaic
On the London Road wall of the main building is a
Neoclassicism mosaic mural entitled
Humanity in the House of Circumstance, designed by Robert Anning Bell and assembled by a group of young women over the course of 210 days. Composed of more than 117,000 individual
, it measures and symbolises personal aspirations and limitations.
The three figures on the far left represent Art, Poetry and Music, standing by a doorway symbolising birth, while the armed figure represents Endurance. The two kneeling figures represent Love and Hope, while the central figure symbolises Humanity. Charity stands to the right bearing figs and wine, followed by white-haired Wisdom holding a staff, and a seated figure representing Meditation. Finally, a figure symbolising Resignation stands by the right-hand doorway, which represents death.
Totem pole
A
totem pole, carved from
Thuja plicata, stands outside the museum's main entrance. It was carved in 1985 as part of the American Arts Festival by Nathan Jackson, a
Tlingit Alaska Natives. The carvings on the pole depict figures from Alaskan legend of a girl who married a bear, with an eagle (Jackson's clan crest) at the top.
The pole is one of only a handful of totem poles in the United Kingdom, others being on display at the
British Museum, the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, Windsor Great Park,
Bushy Park, the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, the Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford, and at Alsford's Wharf in
Berkhamsted.
[ p.3] There is also a totem pole in the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter. It is displayed in their World Cultures galleries.
CUE building
The Horniman Museum contains the CUE (Centre for Understanding the Environment) building. This opened in 1996 and was designed by local architects Archetype using methods developed by
Walter Segal. The building has a grass roof and was constructed from sustainable materials. It also incorporates passive ventilation.
==Gallery==
See also
External links
