Dusting off the cobwebs
THE British Museum, London WC1, may be a cavernous trove of treasures that consumes hours, even days of visitors’ time, but its collection is even more vast, with hundreds of thousands of objects in storage; only 80,000 of its eight million objects are currently on display. However, with the upcoming sale of Government-owned Blythe House, W14, a storage facility for the V&A and Science Museum, as well as the British Museum, the Bloomsbury institution has unveiled plans for a groundbreaking new museum in Berkshire.
A partnership with the University of Reading, the British Museum Archaeological Research Collection (BM_ARC) will move into a new home—designed by John Mcaslan & Partners, the architects responsible for the 2012 King’s Cross station extension—in 2023. It will spread over 15,628sq m (about
170,000sq ft) in the village of Shinfield, functioning as a loans centre and a storage and study facility, as well as housing touring exhibitions. Visitors will be welcome by appointment, free of charge. The project is set to cost £64 million, including £50 million from the sale of Blythe House. ‘We are both a visitor attraction and a research organisation with a collection designed to represent the whole world,’ explains deputy director Jonathan Williams. ‘So we need to ensure the collection is available through the galleries, but also that the study collection is accessible to all.’