White Lodge Museum and Ballet Resource Centre

White Lodge Museum and Ballet Resource Centre

The Royal Ballet School Collections – moving into the digital age

Recent changes to government funding of our Outreach & Access programme have forced us to make the difficult decision to close White Lodge Museum to the public for the foreseeable future.

Rest assured that The Royal Ballet School Collections will remain intact: housed at White Lodge, they will continue to be maintained according to proper archival standards, and managed by the School’s Curator of Collections, Anna Meadmore. The Collections will remain open to visiting researchers by appointment only. Descriptions of the Collections are available on the Archives Hub network.

Increased public engagement with the Collections will be promoted, primarily through digital access online. Work is well under way to create history timelines, extensively illustrated by material from the Collections, which will broaden access to both the archival Collections and historic White Lodge.

Through this exciting new online resource we will be able to display and interpret many more items from the Collections than in the Museum. We view this necessary change of focus as an opportunity to pursue current best practice, which places archival collections at the centre of learning.

The Collections office is open during term time for enquiries about The Royal Ballet School Collections.

Background

Since 1955 White Lodge in London’s Richmond Park has been the home of The Royal Ballet School’s younger students. Commissioned as a hunting lodge by George I, it is a fine example of the neo-Classical English Palladian style of architecture.

For more than eighty years The Royal Ballet School has occupied a central role in the cultural life of the nation, producing some of the world’s most acclaimed dancers and choreographers. Its contribution to Classical ballet is acknowledged internationally.

Since it was founded in 2009, White Lodge Museum has made the building and its history accessible to the public. The Lodge was commissioned in 1727, the year following the debut of the ‘first ballerina’ Marie Camargo at the Paris Opéra. Its story continues to weave in and out of the fascinating history of Classical ballet.

The displays within the Museum feature material from the internationally significant Royal Ballet School Collections. Visitors can gain insight into the history of ballet, the history of the building and its inhabitants, and the story of The Royal Ballet School and Companies.