Foundling Museum

The Foundling Museum explores the history of the Foundling Hospital, the UK’s first children’s charity, and first public art gallery, and celebrates the ways in which artists of all disciplines have helped improve children’s lives for over 270 years. Our programme of regular public events includes exhibitions, displays, weekly lunchtime concerts, talks, performances, workshops and drop-in family activities.

The Foundling Museum stands on the site of the original Foundling Hospital, which was built in the 1740s and demolished in the 1920s. It shows an internationally renowned collection of music, paintings and sculpture set amongst furniture and fittings from the original Hospital building, including the exquisite rococo Court Room. Also on display are artefacts from the Hospital archive admission records, uniforms, lesson plans and apprenticeship documents – that give a sense of what life was like for the foundlings. Amongst the most poignant, are the petitions and ‘tokens’ left by mothers with their babies, as means of identification, should they ever return to claim their children.