The new Heath Robinson Museum
Opening 15 October 2016
Six weeks ago (please forgive slight blog-post delay) I had the chance to go to Pinner in North London to see how work on the new Heath Robinson Museum is progressing. The museum, due to open September 2016, will be ‘a national centre for the understanding and appreciation of the life and work of the artist and illustrator William Heath Robinson’. Heath Robinson is one of my significant artistic influences, so I am thrilled that the museum is going to become a reality.
Sample Heath Robinson picture: ‘Deceiving the Enemy as to the State of the Tide’. More pictures further down the page.
I had a chat with Veronica Chamberlain from West House and Heath Robinson Museum Trust, and then had a chance to see the site. Some photos are below – it was a rather wet and miserable day and of course work will have progressed significantly since then, but they give an idea.
Funds are still needed to complete the project – you can buy a brick via this page. And if you’d like to be informed about the museum when it opens there’s a mailing list – please sign up if this is your kind of thing.
The museum opens on 15 October. Please do consider visiting (it is very easy on the Tube), telling people, and supporting this project if it is something you are able to do.
One of the fundraising initiatives planned is a sale of cartoons, and I am pleased to say that I will be contributing a cartoon for this. More to follow on this.
Links:
- Museum page, including pictures showing how the finished museum will look
- Follow the Heath Robinson Museum on Twitter
- Sign up for the mailing list
W. Heath Robinson – Installing the electric telegraph between Paddington and Slough
My pictures of the site:
West House, Pinner. The museum will be in this park, 5 minutes from the tube, not as far as you imagine from central London.
Yellow machines.
This will be the entrance lobby.
Main exhibition room.
Hole.
Museum building, with West House and cafe next door.
A couple more W. Heath Robinson pictures:
‘A public demonstration for the benefit of professional rugby players by those interested in the inculcation of gentler methods in the game’.
‘Haunted by a strange little genius’