Institute for Museums, Heritage and Society (IMHS) Annual Lecture 2026 --- What is museum closure? by Prof Fiona Candlin, Professor of Museology and Director of the Mapping Museums Lab at Birkbeck, University of London.

What is museum closure?

Over the last two years the Mapping Museums Lab at Birkbeck (University of London) have 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 Fiona Candlin, Director of the Mapping Museums Lab, will discuss the permutations of museum closure and why closure matters for the study of museums.