IMHS Annual Lecture – ‘What is museum closure?’
by Prof Fiona Candlin, Professor of Museology and Director of the Mapping Museums Lab at Birkbeck, University of London.
Thursday, 26 February 2026
This lecture will be held at 4 pm, School VI, St Salvator’s Quad.
‘What is museum closure?’
Over the last two years the Mapping Museums Lab at Birkbeck (University of London) has been collecting data on which museums have closed in the UK since 2000, why they closed, and what happened to the collections. As part of the research, the team had to decide what counted as a closure. In this lecture, Prof Fiona Candlin, Director of the Mapping Museums Lab, will discuss the permutations of museum closure and why closure matters for the study of museums.