The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology in central London has announced that it will be closed for most of this summer while essential building works are carried out.
The Petrie is one of London’s best hidden, yet perfectly sized museums, and as you might have surmised from the name, is home to a large collection of Egyptian artifacts.
The displays have a somewhat old-world charm. They do not concede to modern fashions and consist of long, ever-so-long rows of shelves filled with marvellous objects and only small signs explaining what they are.
Arguably, more signs and information would make it a more informative museum, but that would be to dilute the impact of the large collection almost piled high without distractions.
It’s the visual impact that makes this old museum so interesting to visit.
However, due to “essential improvement works”, the museum will be closed for several months this summer.
The Petrie will close on Saturday 11th May 2024 and reopen (in theory) on Tuesday 6th August 2024. So, if you’ve never been, consider this a gentle prod to get there before it closes.
The museum is open Tues to Fri from 1pm to 5pm, and on Saturdays from 11am to 5pm. The museum is closed on Sunday and Monday. You can find it in the UCL estate near Euston, in Malet Place, just off Tottington Place.
Labels are important though and can impart a lot of info very quickly,
A few years ago I was in the geology collection of the Field Museum in Chicago .
Very few labels and those that were there were barely readable either through faded ink or badly positioned. So even if wanted to find about more I had no references to google. “Purple sparkly rock” doesn’t quite cut it when you want to be educated about that particular stone!
Contrast that to a new Asian gallery where almost every item had an information label and many a QR code to scan if you wanted more.
The museum does have small signs explaining what the items are.
Agreed about wanting the information, but as far as I remember the Petrie does actually have a fair amount of text signs, just small as Ian says. I reckon one could spend an entire day there if you looked in detail at everything- it’s very like the Pitt Rivers in Oxford. It’s a great partner (particularly with all the everyday life material) to the more dramatically presented and large stuff at the BM five minutes away.