The Wellcome Trust, the world’s largest charity, has announced plans for a £20 million public centre for science and the arts. It will be housed in the trust’s original 1930s headquarters at Euston Road, in a conversion which is being designed by Hopkins Architects. Opening in autumn 2006, the new centre will have two permanent galleries for material from the Wellcome collection, plus a gallery for changing displays. On his death in 1936, Sir Henry Wellcome left his pharmaceutical company and personal collection to a charity. The Wellcome company was sold off by the trust in 1986, later merging with Glaxo and then again with SmithKline. This left the charity with an enormous endowment, which now exceeds £10 billion. It currently disburses around £400 million ($740 million) a year in grants.
Everything about Wellcome is massive. Sir Henry’s collection comprised over 1 million objects, broadly relating to medicine and society. Most of the art still remains with the trust, but 100,000 objects are on long-term loan to the Science Museum, 30,000 to the British Museum and a huge number have been dispersed elsewhere.
The Wellcome Trust’s main purpose is to fund research on human and animal health, but it also promotes medical science as an intrinsic part of culture and society—and hence its interest in the arts.
January 3, 2005
