Leighton House Museum
The Leighton House Museum is an art museum and historic house in the Holland Park area of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in west London.
"Leighton House" redirects here. For the house in Westbury, Wiltshire, see Leighton House, Wiltshire.Leighton House Museum
The building was the London home of painter Frederic Leighton, 1st Baron Leighton (1830–1896), who commissioned the architect and designer George Aitchison to build him a combined home and studio noted for its incorporation of tiles and other elements purchased in the Near East to build a magnificent Qa'a (room). The resulting building, completed between 1866 and 1895 on the privately owned Ilchester Estate, is now Grade II* listed. It is noted for its elaborate Orientalist and aesthetic interiors.[1]
The house[edit]
The museum has been open to the public since 1929. In 1958 the London County Council commemorated Leighton with a blue plaque at the museum.[2] The museum was awarded the European Union Prize for Cultural Heritage / Europa Nostra Award in 2012.[3][4] It is open daily except Tuesdays, and is a companion museum to 18 Stafford Terrace, another Victorian artist's home in Kensington.
Council arts strategy[edit]
The building is run by Kensington and Chelsea Borough Council. In 2009 Nicholas Paget-Brown launched the Cultural Placemaking initiative as part of the council's Arts and Culture Policy. He explained that the plan was to build on the work of Opera Holland Park and Leighton House Museum to develop a broader coherent strategy to encourage developers to consider the council's creative and artistic ambitions when working on a development project.[11]
A major £8 million refurbishment,[12][13] including an updated new wing, based on 20th-century additions to the original house, opened on 15 October 2022.[14] The wing includes additional exhibition spaces and displays, a café facing the restored garden, a learning centre, and a store for the collections. Step-free access throughout was also added.[15] A new spiral staircase includes a circular mural "Oneness" by Shahrzad Ghaffari.[16]
In popular culture[edit]
The house's pseudo-Islamic court has featured as a set in various film and television programmes, such as Nicholas Nickleby (2002), Brazil (1985) and an episode of the drama series Spooks, as well as the music video for the songs "Golden Brown" by The Stranglers and "Gold" by Spandau Ballet.[17]