London Museum to Reopen as 'Democratic' Space with Afternoon Tea, DJ Sets, and Artefacts

The Vision for a Democratic Museum

The new London Museum, formerly known as the Museum of London, will be “a social space for the city”, its director Sharon Ament has said, hosting afternoon tea events, monthly dinner clubs and late-night DJ sets where visitors can mingle among the artefacts while dancing.

The Museum's New Home and Events

The institution has been closed since 2022 and will reopen in its new home, painstakingly converted over a decade from two historic former market halls in Smithfield, in the City of London, on 28 November. The cavernous market halls will be connected by a former London street, now glazed, with openings at either end to welcome visitors inside. What was once the trading floor of the Victorian General Market will host a full programme of cultural events, with the first, called London Tastes, focusing on the diversity of the capital’s food scene.

The Collection and Exhibits

Events will sit alongside objects drawn from the museum’s collection of 7m artefacts, which include the Cheapside Hoard of 17th-century jewels, the vest worn by Charles I when he was beheaded in 1649 and a chunk of the Whitechapel fatberg, collected from the capital’s sewers in 2017. Other acquisitions made during the museum’s temporary closure include a police sentry box decorated with piranhas by Banksy in 2024 and the Bloomberg Collection of 14,000 Roman artefacts.

The Future of Museums

Ament said: “Moving into a market really made us think differently about how we could possibly be as a museum. What we’ve all learned is that markets make absolutely fantastic museums, because of all the intrinsic qualities of a market that I don’t think are necessarily always built into museums. A market is a social space so we are a social place.” She added that many other museum directors had been “grasping towards” this approach, but were often hampered by their institutional culture or historic buildings.