Past Exhibitions & Displays

Remarkable women who have shaped contemporary British society choose objects that speak to them from the Museum’s Collection

Marking 100 years of female suffrage, we presented a landmark exhibition highlighting the role of women in the establishment and running of London’s Foundling Hospital

Jodie Carey created three new installations especially for the Museum

This special display presented original illustrations by award-winning illustrator Michael Foreman produced for the children’s book Lucky Button

The relationship between language and the living world was celebrated in this exhibition of poetry and illustration

Curated by Dr Jacqueline Riding, this exhibition explored Georgian attitudes to love, desire and female respectability through the radical paintings of Joseph Highmore

This Autumn we display a series of previously unseen sculptures by acclaimed artist Rachel Kneebone, on display amongst the Museum’s historic Collection

This family-friendly exhibition explored how Hetty Feather has brought the history of the Foundling Hospital to life

This in-focus display explored the treatment and care of disabled children by the Foundling Hospital in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

The Museum presented a major new project by artist Mark Neville exploring childhood play, including an exhibition of photographs

Guest curator Jane Levi presented the multi-faceted impact that food and eating regimes had on children at the Foundling Hospital

A major exhibition curated by Cornelia Parker, featuring the work of over sixty artists from a range of creative disciplines

An exhibition exploring how illustrators from European folklore and fiction have brought to life fictional characters who are orphaned, adopted, fostered or found

Curated by Professor Lynda Nead, this major exhibition explored the myth and reality of the ‘fallen woman’ in Victorian Britain through artworks and archival documents

This major research project examined the Foundling Hospital’s historic links with the military from the Napoleonic Wars to the twentieth century

This exhibition investigated the rich tradition of decorative plasterwork, from the Rococo splendour of the Foundling Hospital Court Room, to the contemporary designs of master craftsman Geoffrey Preston

26 writers were paired with 26 objects for a special display exploring the Foundling Hospital story

This exhibition revealed how babies and children inspired modernist sculptor Jacob Epstein, and explores his unconventional family life in Bloomsbury.

This exhibition told the story of an eminent Georgian physician and patron of the arts, Dr. Richard Mead, who pioneered innoculation and helped create the Foundling Hospital

Progress brought together contemporary responses to Hogarth’s ‘The Rake’s Progress’, by David Hockney, Yinka Shonibare MBE, Grayson Perry and Jessie Brennan

In the 300th anniversary year of the coronation of George I, the first Hanoverian king, this fascinating exhibition explored George Frideric Handel and his music for royal occasions

Four contemporary photographers explored issues of motherhood and loss in an exhibition curated by Susan Bright

For this unique site-specific installation, leading ceramic artist Clare Twomey inscribed individual good deeds onto over 1,000 cups and saucers, encouraging visitors to undertake a good deed in exchange for keeping the cup.

This exhibition revealed the heart-wrenching stories of the Foundling Hospital tokens, over 250 years after they were left by mothers with their babies

This exhibition celebrated the bicentenary of the birth of nineteenth-century writer and campaigner of social reform, Charles Dickens.

In the summer of 2012 we celebrated Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, with the biggest UK exhibition on the Gardens in over forty years

This exhibition presented recent work by Quentin Blake, commissioned by four hospitals in the UK and France

Foundling Voices featured the experiences of 74 former pupils whose memories of their childhoods in the first half of the 20th century have been graphically preserved in audio interviews. 

Fabric swatches from the eighteenth century tell the moving stories of mothers and the babies they gave up to the Foundling Hospital

Mat Collishaw, Tracey Emin and Paula Rego showed new and related works at the Foundling Museum throughout the eighteenth-century interiors as well as outside spaces

The Foundling was a multi-discipline, video and sound installation by the artist Terry Smith

The Foundling Museum marked the 250th anniversary of Handel’s death (14 April 1759) with this exhibition

John Kindness disguised the Museum’s exhibition gallery as an 18th-century room to harmonise with the original rooms in the Museum

A collaboration between artist Caroline Isgar and writer Michèle Roberts, inspired by objects in the Foundling Museum collection, which explored mother and child separation

This exhibition explored the development of the Handel Festivals at the Crystal Palace in the nineteenth century

Fifteen contemporary artists were invited to create works inspired by the art and social history collections at the Foundling Museum

This exhibition examined the contributions made by William Hogarth during his life to the Foundling Hospital