Worthing Museum and Art Gallery facts for kids
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| Established | 1908 |
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| Location | Chapel Road, Worthing, West Sussex, England |
| Public transit access | Worthing railway station |
| Area | 588,000 sq ft (54,600 m2) in 94 Galleries |
Worthing Museum and Art Gallery is a cool place to visit in the middle of Worthing. It's close to St Paul's Church. The museum building is over 100 years old! It first opened in 1908.
It was built to be both a library and a museum. A famous person named Andrew Carnegie helped pay for the library part. This museum is the biggest one in West Sussex!
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What You Can See: Collections and Displays
Worthing Museum and Art Gallery has one of the biggest collections of costumes and textiles in the whole UK. The museum has so many items! Only a small part of them are on display.
Fashion Through Time
The galleries show clothes from the 1800s and 1900s. The 1800s gallery looks at how women's shapes changed over that century. The 1900s gallery focuses on women's fashion. It includes pictures of local people from different times. There is also a small display of menswear.
Amazing Archaeological Finds
The museum keeps records of all archaeological finds. These are things found underground between the Adur and Arun rivers. This includes the John Pull Collection of neolithic flint mines. These mines were even shown on the TV show Time Team!
You can also see the Patching hoard of gold coins. There's an Anglo-Saxon long boat too. Another cool item is the Highdown Goblet. This is an Ancient Egyptian glass vase with Ancient Greek writing on it. It was found at an Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Highdown.
Dolls, Toys, and Childhood Memories
The museum has over 900 dolls! It also has a collection of toys from the Georgian period (a long time ago) up to today. This is part of its Juvenilia collection.
There's also the Colin Mears Collection. This has 2,000 objects that show what childhood was like in the 1900s. The museum also has collections about social history, old coins (called numismatics), and beautiful fine and decorative art.
Art Collection Highlights
When the museum first started, most of the art was by artists who had strong links to Sussex. But there were some exceptions! These included works by Nicholas Roerich and Hobbema.
The collection grew to include major styles in British painting. One famous painting is Bianca (1869) by William Holman Hunt. You can also see works by Lucien Pissarro and Ivon Hitchens.
Sculptures to See
The museum also has sculptures. These include works by John Skelton, Philip Jackson, Dora Gordine, and Anthony Stevens. These artists are known across the country. They also have connections to the local area.
In 2008, the museum got Skelton's sculpture called The Diver (1970). It's carved from walnut wood. This was made possible with help from the V&A Purchase Fund and the Friends of the Worthing Museum.
Visiting Art Exhibitions
The Art Gallery often hosts special exhibitions. These are shows that visit the museum for a short time. For example, Jon Edgar had an exhibition in 2010. Dora Gordine had one in 2011. This was in partnership with Kingston University's Dorich House Museum.
