A Rallying Call for the River & Rowing Museum

The River & Rowing Museum Foundation is embarking on a significant restructuring amid our ongoing financial challenge, which is largely related to the upkeep of our building.

Ever since opening our doors in 1998 the Museum has attempted to balance our revenue with the expenditure necessary to maintain a substantial landmark building and a collection of 30,000 objects spread across five galleries and storage facilities.

Recently, good progress has been made on increasing visitor numbers and a stable income stream has been established from leasing office spaces to local businesses. However, even these improvements don’t achieve the income required for a sustainable museum.

Accordingly, the trustees have made the difficult decision to explore new options whilst the Foundation has the financial capability to make considered choices. These options will almost certainly result in the Museum closing in its current form, hopefully re-emerging as a more affordable and sustainable model.

This approach is designed to preserve the public value in the assets held by the Foundation – namely the building, collection and charitable funds.

The Henley Standard reported on it here: Museum remains ‘too costly’ – Henley Standard