Key Change! Towards a new RCM Museum

Friday 16 October 2015

We’re delighted to announce the opening of our museum’s new temporary exhibition: Key Change! Towards a New RCM Museum.

Now over a century old, the RCM collections have gone from strength to strength since the first donations of instruments from Maharajah Sourindro Mohun Tagore and Sir George Donaldson in the 1890’s.  The RCM Museum now faces an exciting new chapter, closing temporarily from December 2015 to be redesigned as part of More Music: Reimagining the RCM. ‘Key Change! Towards a New RCM Museum’ celebrates the history and development of this important collection.

The exhibition captures three moments of the RCM Museum of Music’s life: exploring the origins of the and taking an in-depth look at some of the museum’s treasures; charting the public life of the museum and the way it has responded to the needs of its ever-changing public; and, finally, exploring the museum’s potential for the future.

Visitors to this temporary exhibition are invited to have their say on what the future RCM Museum of Music will look like by interacting with special visitor feedback activity stations across the museum.

As the museum approaches this exciting moment of change, the RCM’s collections will continue to be available online through a national database and virtual interface, supported by the HEFCE Catalyst Fund for Knowledge Exchange. This interface for the UK’s musical instrument museums will be a powerful resource of national and international importance, delivering scientifically refined, dynamically linked, and media-rich information on over 40,000 instruments.

The RCM Museum of Music is open from 11.30am to 4.30pm, Tuesday to Friday, and is free to visit. 'Key Change! Towards a New RCM Museum' is open now until Friday 11 December 2015.