About the Museum

Two visitors to the Royal College of Music Museum look downwards into a glass showcase containing items on display. A harp is placed in the background.
The Royal College of Music Museum maintains one of the richest and most relevant collections of music-related objects in the UK and Europe. Standing in excess of 14,000 items, it represents a range of music-making activities over a period of more than five centuries.

Explore South Kensington's Museum of Music

After undergoing extensive redevelopment, the Museum reopened to the public in October 2021. As an interactive space, it hosts regular performances by RCM musicians and the opportunity for visitors to create their own music in the Weston Discovery Centre. As well as musical instruments, the Museum tells its story through art, including an iconic portrait of the opera singer Farinelli and a remarkable Tischbein featuring an instrument from the collection displayed alongside. 

There are three key areas in the Museum – Music is Creation, Music is Craft and Music is Performance – each exploring phases of the creative process from the birth of a new idea, its realisation through craftsmanship and finally to the performance. In its beautiful double-height atrium space, a hanging artwork installation by Scottish artist Victoria Morton takes its inspiration from the permanent exhibition, having been specially commissioned and created for the space.

Also on display in the Lavery Gallery are a series of portraits by celebrated German artist Milein Cosman is on display to the public for the first time in the Lavery Gallery, featuring intimate sketches of RCM alumni Benjamin Britten, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Imogen Holst and Amaryllis Fleming, alongside many other composers and musicians.

Celebrating our redevelopment

Collections

Explore the history of music wherever you are

The Museum collection is publicly available online in several free digital exhibitions released online through Google Arts & Culture. These specially curated exhibitions explore the core collection and spotlight particular items, composers and themes represented strongly in the Museum. The Museum’s collections can also be explored through the online catalogue. 

Also available online is the RCM Library’s extensive collection; together, the Royal College of Music’s Museum and Library collections were awarded prestigious designated status by Arts Council England in recognition of their outstanding cultural significance.

The Museum as education

The valuable historical artefacts held by the Museum are often the focus of teaching and other Royal College of Music activities, particularly in Historical Performance and Research. Many of the instruments are in playing condition and often brought to life in performance by students and professors.

Explore our Museum events and discover

Our Wolfson Centre in Music & Material Culture provides easy access to parts of the Royal College of Music's collections for the purpose of research by RCM professors, students and external researchers.

Through the collection the Museum supports learning in a tangible way, offering students the vital opportunity to engage directly with music history and the RCM’s impressive legacy. Furthermore, extensive conservation and digitisation ensures the collection remains protected and accessible to a wide range of people for generations to come. 

A man presenting on a screen, using a computer to record sounds being made by a group of young girls wearing pink and blue dresses, standing to his left, in front of an audience with families.

Attendees at a family concert and workshop with the Museum and School of Noise.

A women looking at a painting at the RCM Museum, with another visitor with short grey hair looking beside them.

A guide gives visitors a tour of the Museum, sharing information about a painting and drawing on display inside a showcase.

Two violinists and one cellist, one male and two female, perform music on the ground floor of the museum, seated under a sculptural artwork descending from the ceiling.

RCM students performing the violin and cello in the Museum gallery, seated under a sculptural artwork by the artist Victoria Morton.

A male and female students, of the Royal College of Music, perform on a harpsichord and an organ in the Museum gallery while visitors explore the gallery.

RCM students perform on a harpsichord and an organ in the Museum gallery.

A male researcher takes photographs of a historic musical instrument, in front of a white background, in the museum research centre.

A researcher photographs a historic musical instrument in the Wolfson Centre in Music & Material Culture.

National Lottery Heritage Fund support

The Royal College of Music Museum has recently undergone a major redevelopment, supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, which awarded a £3.6 million grant in October 2016, and forms part of a larger £40 million philanthropic investment in the future of music education. In addition to a new Museum, the RCM has built new performance and rehearsal spaces, improved access, implemented more scholarships and an expanded infrastructure for teaching and digital innovation.

Find out about celebrating our redevelopment

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