Foundling Museum

About Foundling Museum

Museum in Bloomsbury, London, England, United Kingdom

The Foundling Museum in Brunswick Square, Bloomsbury, tells the story of the Foundling Hospital, founded by the sea captain and philanthropist Thomas Coram in 1739 as Britain's first home for children at risk of abandonment, an institution that continues today as the children's charity Coram. The museum houses the nationally important Foundling Hospital Collection of paintings, mementoes and documents, and the Gerald Coke Handel Collection, an internationally important collection of material relating to the composer George Frideric Handel and his contemporaries. It reopened to the public in June 2004 after a major refurbishment of the building. Artists are central to the hospital's story: the painter William Hogarth donated his work and encouraged fellow artists to do the same, making the building Britain's first public art gallery, while Handel gave annual benefit performances of Messiah for the charity, so that the children's home became an early centre of art and music. The museum today celebrates the ways in which creative people have helped improve children's lives for more than 275 years, and its most moving exhibits are the small tokens that mothers left with their babies in the hope of identifying them later. It is a member of the London Museums of Health & Medicine group. A visit is touching and suitable for families, combining social history, art and music in a quiet building close to the British Museum.

Where:

London, United Kingdom