The Museum of the Home, formerly the Geffrye Museum, reopened in June last year after a lengthy period of refurbishment. I am late to the party.
Losing the 'Geffrye' is deliberate. Sir Robert Geffrye, who funded the almshouses the museum is housed in, made some of his fortune from slavery so his name hung increasingly awkwardly above the door. His statue remains but only because the Culture Secretary insisted - locals and trustees wanted it gone. At least you no longer see it when you come in, but that's mainly because the museum has reoriented itself with a new accessible entrance facing Hoxton station. The remodelling is significant so even if you've been before a lot of what you'll see is fresh, from whole new sets of rooms to consciously refocused collections.
Previously the museum was a walkthrough of period rooms along a narrow corridor, breaking at the end for a cafe, a gift shop and an additional swirl of domestic nostalgia. That's all (mostly) still present but with an additional chain of rooms in the basement, a reference library shoehorned into the roof and a new cafe inside the shell of a former pub. The one-way route invites you to do the basement first, return along the building at almshouse level and fit in the period gardens when and where you can.
The new rooms are small, intimate and a deliberate contrast to the middle-classery above. Previously the museum's focus was furniture and interiors, but the new mission statement involves "moving from objects to questions and stories", hence the promotion of "diverse, thought-provoking and personal stories of home". Less stuff, basically, and more photos where the important thing is to read the captions underneath. If you like a good Windsor chair you're still going to see one, but also Paul and Brenda's 1965 wedding video and Bangladeshi mothers explaining how their home reflects their faith.
They've kept it varied and also loosely thematic, although sometimes the theme is only obvious if you read the blurb by the door. The room about housework includes old vacuum cleaners but also radical posters protesting that women ought to aspire to work beyond the home. The cabinet containing postwar utility furniture faces a wall where Habitat and Argos catalogues are displayed. A bright orange rotating cassette tape holder shares the limelight alongside a pair of Victorian lustreware vases and a Apple Mac. It feels like almost any object in anyone's home could have ended up here so long as it had the right descriptive label.
A few features are interactive in an attempt to slow down younger visitors, including a 'how many bed bugs can you squash?' game, a fairly limited 'design your own mug' screen and a sofa loaded up for playing Super Mario Kart on the SNES. Some rooms only work if you invest time listening to testimony or watching a showreel of videos. The undercroft is gorgeous but also empty apart from a servantspeak soundscape. The big question in the last room, devoted to feedback on what you've just seen, is 'Where Do You Store Your Ketchup?" (current top answer - in the fridge). What a waste of a space. But overall the new approach justifies the museum's fresh slant, and if you engage properly along the way it can be quite affecting.
Upstairs initially looks like it's been given the same treatment. The first room has a big multicultural poem on one wall and objects on display including a housebrick, a central heating thermostat and an Alexa. There's even a 1985 Littlewoods catalogue open at a page with five pensive men modelling stonewashed Lee and Brutus jeans, which isn't something I ever thought I'd see inside a glass case. But step into the corridor beyond and all the period rooms stretch out much as before, inherently familiar if a little tweaked. Small quibble: the electronic crackles made by the Georgian brazier are embarrassingly unconvincing.
The displays in all the intermediate vestibules have been changed, which means more multicultural poems and the occasional dessert dish with an apologetic message ("The insatiable appetite for sugar intensified the expansion of the sugar plantations in the Caribbean and the brutal conditions enslaved Africans had to endure"). Then just past the chapel is a massive slatted wooden intervention that acts as stairs up to a new Collections Corridor. It's great that the museum now has somewhere decent to store its artefacts and a library where you can come and study them, but that's by appointment only so don't expect to get inside.
I was concerned that the Late Victorian parlour had been replaced by a set of stairs and some lockers, but this turned out to have been relocated to the annexe beyond the gift shop. I'm not sure which later period room they extinguished to slot it in. The biggest change here is the appearance of a gorgeously garish West Indian-style sitting room circa 1976 complete with pineapple-shaped drinks cooler, orange cushions and a can of Mr Sheen. More subtly the 1998 loft apartment nextdoor is now owned by 'Matthew and his partner Ben', fresh back from protesting about Section 28 at Pride, hence a few appropriate magazines now appear amongst their minimalist possessions.
The gardens are lovely, officially branded Gardens Through Time with each segment representing a successive century. If horticulture is your thing you'll be pleased to hear that every plant is labelled, and the gardeners seemed very approachable too. I did notice that a large modern pavilion has been squeezed in at the back near the herb garden, indeed the museum now has a considerable roster of empty-ish spaces ideal for hiring out (weddings, parties and corporate events a speciality). I did not visit the cafe. I also skipped the gift shop.
If you've not seen inside the Museum of the Home in the last twelve months it deserves another look because it's basically a new museum and a half. Not only has it diversified into stories but it's also taken a stride towards the Afro-Caribbean community, as well it might in the historical circumstances. Your favourite exhibits are still here and the extras should at least be interesting, even challenging, assuming they hold your attention. If there's a risk it's that the new focus on stories is too broad and the displays become a reflection of wider society rather than our collective homes. But whatever, better to drop in now before they dress it up for Christmas, and then come back in December and enjoy it all again.
