About

Museums collect items. Items that tell different stories, items that give us a gateway to the past. Sometimes those items come from great moments of history or great celebrations, sometimes they come from grandmas’ bottom draw. Each though, give us an opportunity to curate a story around this collection of items and use them to tell a story. Each museum has thousands of objects both on display and in their stores. The Museum of Richmond is no different.

However, there are times when beavering away in a museum store that you come across an object that is fascinating or beautiful but doesn’t automatically fall into a narrative or story you wish to tell. It’s a shame that we don’t have room to have all of our collection and stories on display. It was with this in mind that we curated this exhibition From The Store. This hopefully may be the first in a series of semi-regular displays exploring the objects hidden away in our stores. Items that may be beautiful or historical but not necessarily connected to our permanent displays and general history of Richmond.

This exhibition explored some of the posters in our collection. A poster is often designed for a fleeting moment; to announce, celebrate, advertise, or call a community to action.

Our collection features different examples from each of these callings. Many come from London Transport and their desire to attract visitors to Richmond.

However, we also have a poster from when Dr Beeching threatened what is now the Mildmay line with closure.

We also have a lovely collection of posters from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents and would have been on display around Richmond in the 1940s.

Each poster will have a story behind it, and we are pleased to show some of our hidden gems from our stores.