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New £20 million galleries at the Museum of London will house an extra 2,000 objects to bring the history of the city alive, its director Jack Lohman announced today.
Five extra galleries will provide 25 per cent more space, allowing the museum to show a total of 7,000 artefacts. They will open in the spring.
The expansion will enable important exhibits - such as Art Deco lifts from Selfridges and an 18th century debtors' prison complete with original graffiti - to be shown in their entirety.
Hundreds of items will come out of store to tell the story of London from the Great Fire of 1666 to today. New displays will focus on how London's inhabitants helped transform the city, from the 18th-century Huguenot silk weavers of Spitalfield to Mary Quant and the fashion stores of King's Road in the Sixties.
A section will be dedicated to the pleasure gardens of the 18th and 19th century. There will be a model of two east London streets, London Lane and Ellingfort Road, by artist Tom Hunter. Professor Lohman said: "It will be spectacular."
The Heritage Lottery Fund contributed £11.5 million with other gifts from the Department for Culture, the City of London and charitable foundations, but the museum still has £2.2 million to raise.
