White lodge museum moves into the digital age

Frederick ashton with students at white lodge in the studio named after him when he retired as director of the royal ballet in 1970.

We regret to announce that, due to recent changes to our government funding, White Lodge Museum will be closed to the public for the foreseeable future. The Royal Ballet School Collections will remain accessible through the Archives Hub network and a new online timeline.

 

Despite the closure, The Royal Ballet School Collections will remain intact and will continue to be maintained according to proper archival standards, managed by the School’s Curator of Collections, Anna Meadmore.

Continuing access

The Collections will remain open to visiting researchers and descriptions of the Collections will continue to be made available through the Archives Hub network.

They will also become accessible worldwide through a new online timeline, to be published later this year. The timeline will be extensively illustrated with material from the Collections, which will broaden access to both the archival Collections and historic White Lodge. We will be able to display and interpret many more items from the Collections than in the Museum through this exciting new online resource.

We view this necessary change of focus as an opportunity to pursue current best practice, which places archival collections at the centre of learning.

About the Museum and Collections

Opened in 2009, the Museum has had more than 12,500 visitors to a range of temporary exhibitions that have showcased materials both from the School’s Collections and loans from private collectors.

The Royal Ballet School Collections date from the School’s founding in 1926: material includes extensive photographic and documentary records of many celebrated alumni, as well as the personal collections of significant individuals and organisations associated with the School.

These include the Founder of The Royal Ballet School and Companies, Ninette de Valois; the dance historian and collector, Arnold Haskell; the Camargo Ballet Society, whose Treasurer was the economist, John Maynard Keynes; and the great teacher, Vera Volkova, among whose students were Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev.