The Museum of London is using the Internet auction site eBay to offer the public a chance to bid for space in an exhibition display case.
In one of the most unusual auctions to be held on eBay, the museum is offering to the highest bidder the chance to win a square metre of empty display case in the museum’s front entrance at London Wall in the City.
The lucky winner will be able to display their own memories and mementos of London life - or indeed whatever they see fit - until February 2007. Some suggestions, such as “My Demob suit” and a film and video camera from a bar mitzvah have already been volunteered by members via the museum’s email at space@museumoflondon.org.uk.
The scheme is part of the Museum’s ongoing initiative to redevelop its lower floor galleries in 2007 and in particular its most recent initiative to reach out to the people of London, Map My London, a new website launched on November 16 2006 that asks Londoners to download their most memorable London moments onto a large interactive digital map.
Developed in association with Google Maps, the site invites people to upload their impressions of the city and to create an ‘emotional memory bank’ of London, which will form part of the Museum’s permanent collection.
“The impetus behind the initiative to engage Londoners is the ambitious planned redevelopment of the Museum’s lower floor galleries,” said the Museum’s Director, Jack Lohman.
“We approach this with the conviction that we have a duty to act as cultural custodians of London’s present as well as its past and that as the museum for Londoners we must be relevant and accessible for everyone.”
The Museum, which is the only one to tell the story of London from prehistoric times to the present, will begin an £18 million initiative called Capital City Project to redevelop its galleries in March 2007.
Map My London asks Londoners to download their most memorable London moments onto a large interactive digital map.
Having already secured a grant of £11.5 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund and other foundations and companies the Museum has not been shy to look at innovative ways of raising funds and the profile of its redevelopment.
In May 2006 it embarked on raising the remaining £4 million it needed via a major public appeal called the Great Sale of London, which saw years in the capital’s history from 1666, the year of the Great Fire of London, right up to the Olympic Year of 2012 sold in return for a personalised plaque in a new timeline in the museum’s revamped galleries.
The launch of the website and the eBay auction marks the final push in the Museum’s drive to fund the redevelopment and to forge stronger links with the city’s communities. A series of events are currently underway that see key items from the Museum’s collections visit the places they were originally found.
An incendiary bomb dropped by in the first Zeppelin raid on London has been back to the Royal Exchange, where it was dropped in 1915; Henry Cooper’s boxing gloves returned to Wembley Stadium (the scene of his famous bout against Muhammed Ali - then Cassius Clay) and a set of suffragette chains were returned to the House of Commons where they were photographed with women MPs.
In the meantime, Londoners who want to make their mark on the rich and varied history of the capital by getting their own personal display case, or have suggestions for what it should contain need to go to the Museum of London eBay page from November 17.
