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Foundling Museum

@foundlingmuseum

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🎨 Where art, care and compassion meet. Discover timeless, human stories that speak across generations
👀 Visit us Tues-Sun. We’re free for 21 & under

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Save the date! 'Where We Grow: nature, nurture & childhood' opens this autumn at the Foundling Museum 🌱

Through contemporary art, photography, archival material and historic objects, ‘Where We Grow’ will explore the powerful relationship between childhood, childcare and the natural world, and consider what we need from the places where we play, live and learn.

The exhibition will feature newly commissioned and existing works from contemporary artists including Joy Gregory, Andy Holden, Jade de Montserrat, Mark Neville, Larry Achiampong and David Blandy.

This exhibition is free with Museum entry, and can be revisited for free within a year of your initial visit with an Annual Pass.

📅 Opening November 17
🎟️ Find out more and book your ticket at the link in our bio.

🔍 Andy Holden, 'How the artist was led to the study of nature', 2020. Photo credit: Daniel Brown. Courtesy the artist;
Token: Calico printed with a bird, 1759. Courtesy Coram;
Jade de Montserrat, 'Quiet as it’s kept II', 2024. Courtesy the artist and Bosse & Baum;
'Children in the long grass', Coram’s Fields, London, c. 1929. Courtesy Coram’s Fields Half of a vintage, pale blue tint filled with cotton wool and little eggs of varying sizes and colours, in shades of pale blue, yellow, green and white. Overlaid in black are the words 'Where We grow: Nature, nurture & childhood'. by @foundlingmuseum

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a month ago

Did you know? The Foundling Hospital was not only the UK’s first children’s charity, but also its first public art gallery 🎨 ⁠
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Artist William Hogarth donated one of his paintings to the Hospital in 1740 and encouraged other leading artists to do the same. ⁠
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Emma Ridgway (@emmajridgway), the Foundling Museum’s Director, shares more on how this gallery came to be! by @foundlingmuseum

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6 months ago

'In fiction - and in life - we measure heroism in a protagonist by the depth of difficulties they have to rise above' 🦸

While we prepare for our next exhibition we’re looking back at an old favourite. ‘Superheroes, Orphans & Origins – 125 years in comics' explored the representation of foundlings, orphans, adoptees, and foster children in comics, graphic novels and sequential art from around the globe.

This print by Woodrow Phoenix is ‘Up in Flames’, and was commissioned for the exhibition. ‘Almost all child heroes have backstories that begin with trauma; disastrous circumstances that end up with both parents dying and a child left all alone... ‘Up in Flames’ is a look at all those inciting incidents, distilled into one long disaster poem.’

Limited edition prints of ‘Up in Flames’ are available in our shop.

🔍 Woodrow Phoenix, ‘Up in Flames’ (2021) A comic-style illustration of Astro Boy looking terrified while surrounded by huge, colourful androids. Astro Boy has black hair styled in his two signature spikes, wears black pants with a green belt, and red boots. by @foundlingmuseum

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21 hours ago

This padlock was left with a baby girl at the Foundling Hospital in 1756 🔒 ⁠
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Padlocks have long been used as symbols of love and promise. Did Elizabeth's mother keep the key that unlocked this one?⁠
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When a baby was brought to the Hospital, they were almost immediately sent to the countryside to be nursed. Most babies were wet nursed (breastfed), but for a variety of reasons some were dry nursed with a mixture called ‘pap’. ⁠
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To discover more about how wet nurses were selected, monitored and supported, and the effect they had on foundling children’s lives, join us on Friday 9 October for a talk with Dr Deb Albon. Join us in person or online. Tickets available at the link in our bio. by @foundlingmuseum

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3 days ago

At ev’ry shadow now am seiz’d with fear, / Not for myself, but for the charge I bear.

We’re not sure how this work came to be in the Foundling Hospital’s Collection, or when, though it’s likely that it was donated or acquired sometime in the 19th century. Most of the works in the Hospital’s Collection were judged to have some relevance to the institution’s work. In this case, perhaps, the Hospital Governors saw a mother suffering, hoping for a better life for her child, willing them to forget her and strike forth on a ‘happy shore’.

🔍 Attr. John Bacon (1740–1799), ‘The Flight of Aeneas from Troy’, c. 1769, painted plaster

📖 Translations of Virgil’s Aeneid by John Dryden. by @foundlingmuseum

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7 days ago

Pearl Martley’s mother placed her in the care of the Foundling Hospital in 1938, when Pearl was a few months old. Pregnant out of wedlock, Pearl’s mother’s story is one that many people who grew up in the Hospital would be familiar with.

While she never met her birth family, Pearl made lifelong friends at the Hospital, including Alice Hatter who was ‘almost like a sister’.

After leaving school, Pearl worked as a secretary in Cambridge. She met and married her husband Gordon in the 1960s, and they stayed in Cambridge. Pearl died in March of this year, at the age of 88.

Hear Pearl in her own words as part of our oral history project, Foundling Voices, at the link in our bio.⁠

📷 Pearl, left, and Alice in a pram. The two girls were sent to the same foster mother as babies.
Pearl outside Pi offices in Cambridge, her first place of work.
Pearl aged 72. A black and white photo of two babies in white bonnets facing each other in a large pram, against a hot pink background. Overlaid is the text ‘Pearl Martley’ and ‘My mother was 15 on the day I was born. She was 16 the following day, Christmas day. Her father was a prison officer at Pentonville. Her mother was dead.’ by @foundlingmuseum

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9 days ago

194 years ago on this day Emma Brownlow was born 🖌️🎂

Brownlow (1832–1905) was an artist, the primary breadwinner in her family, and the daughter of a foundling. She knew the Hospital intimately from her early years and her paintings of life at the Hospital, though not entirely accurate, hint at a self-reflexive commentary about the power of art in the institution's work.

🔍 First image: Emma Brownlow, ‘Self Portrait’, c.1850 A painting of a Victorian woman in yellow dress against a brown-green background. by @foundlingmuseum

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11 days ago

A certain beloved baking show is back on our screens, so to get into the mood we’ve gone into the archives 🍰 ⁠
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This photo is from a series of posed pictures of Foundling Hospital pupils from the early 1930s. While the girls would have learned some baking basics as part of their curriculum, they’re not really making anything here – hence the conspicuously empty tins. ⁠
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These shots were likely taken for publicity reasons, but we’re not sure where they would have ended up. ⁠
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🔍 Archive photo of Foundling Hospital pupils baking, c. 1930/31, courtesy Coram Black and white photo of a group of girls in white aprons and caps pretending to bake. by @foundlingmuseum

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12 days ago

300 years ago, a celebrity soprano arrived in London 🎶

You have one month left to see this and more in our Handel Gallery display, ‘300 Years of the Rival Queens: Handel’s 1726 Opera Season’. Free with the price of admission. Book your ticket now at the link in our bio.

🔍 Venarys after an unknown artist, ‘Le triomphe du goût moderne, dédie alla Signora Faustina Bordoni’, c. 1727

Slide 1: Detail of an engraving showing a woman floating down a river on a cello. Beside her is a small boat carrying two gondolier-like sailors with enlarged cello bows as oars and a man in a wig and red wrap. The boat is animated to rock gently up and down.
Slide 2: Detail of a tree, gently swaying, with St Paul’s in the background.
Slide 3: Clouds slowly moving across the sky with the city skyline of London in the distance. A ‘prima donna’ floats down the Thames on a cello. To the delight of operagoers, the celebrated Italian soprano Faustina Bordoni has come to London at last.
But, there’s already a prima donna in town: Francesca Cuzzoni. Who will come out on top? by @foundlingmuseum

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14 days ago

What do James Bond, Matilda Wormwood and Spiderman have in common? 🕸️

‘Superman was a Foundling’ (2014) is a mural by poet and playwright Lemn Sissay (@sissaylemn)which explores the striking roles of orphaned, fostered and adopted children in our culture.

Sissay himself grew up in care, and describes the project as addressing the disparity between our admiration or appreciation for fictional characters and a widespread disregard for their real-life counterparts. Created as part of his Foundling Fellowship, Sissay says, ‘their adventures have enriched our lives, but we do not recognise the connection between the fictional characters and the fostered, adopted and orphaned children in our midst.’

🔍 Lemn Sissay, ‘Superman was a Foundling’, 2014. He was aided by artist Charlotte Jonsmyr in the realisation of this mural. A mural of black text on a white background. The names of famous characters from film, tv, literature and myth are listed, either as 'adopted', 'fostered', 'orphaned' or 'a foundling'. by @foundlingmuseum

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17 days ago

Ever feel like someone in a painting is staring right at you? 👀 ⁠
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The young girl's gaze in 'The Pinch of Poverty' by Thomas Benjamin Kennington was meant to evoke that feeling in contemporary onlookers, urging them to consider the 'social evil' of poverty. Kennington was best known for his scenes of upper-class women and their children, but this piece was the last in a series that marked a stark turn to social realism. This mother (likely widowed or unmarried) and her three children have turned to selling flowers on a damp street corner to support themselves. ⁠
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In 19th-century Britain, unmarried mothers were in an extremely precarious position. Single mothers unable to support themselves and their families faced the workhouse and the threat of separation from their children. This is one of many reasons why so many women turned to the Foundling Hospital for help. ⁠
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You can see this painting at the Foundling Museum, where it hangs on our main staircase. ⁠
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🔍 Thomas Benjamin Kennington (1856–1916) ‘The Pinch of Poverty’, 1891 by @foundlingmuseum

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19 days ago

Since John Caldicott was brought to the Foundling Hospital as a tiny baby in 1936, a lot has changed about the way we care for children in this country.

Join us at the Foundling Museum on September 28 to hear John’s extraordinary life story, from growing up in institutional care to reconnecting with his birth mother as an adult. John will also be joined by Isabelle Kirkham (@isabelle_marie_kirkham), a care-experienced storyteller and theatre-maker, to reflect on what has changed in children’s social care—and what has stayed the same—from John’s experiences in the 1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s to the care system today. ⁠

🎟️Tickets are available at the link in our bio. People with experience of children’s social care go free. by @foundlingmuseum

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22 days ago