David Chipperfield’s River & Rowing Museum Will Close in September
Citing financial pressures, the David Chipperfield–designed River & Rowing Museum in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, announced earlier this month that it will permanently close its doors on September 21 and seek new homes for its roughly 35,000-item collections. Potentially relocating the museum to a new, smaller facility is also being mulled as an option, interim museum manager Kevin Sandhu relayed to BBC News. The venue had reported net losses averaging roughly $1.4 million annually, due largely to the high costs associated with operating the building.
Perched on the south bank of the Thames, the 35,000-square-foot museum was widely lauded upon its 1998 debut. Its opening marked the arrival of Chipperfield, who had not completed a building in his native England prior, as a major architectural presence. Twenty-five years later when Chipperfield was awarded the 2023 Pritzker Architecture Prize, the museum was singled out as a keystone work. “Designed during a time when the future of modern architecture seemed uncertain in Great Britain, this building both assimilated with and deviated from a traditional English neighborhood,” the prize organizers wrote of the structure, which is clad in untreated oak and pays homage to traditional boat sheds and barns dotting the Oxfordshire countryside. It offers “a subtle but powerful discourse between modernity and heritage.”
Encompassing five main galleries, the River & Rowing Museum has long done robust business for a small and decidedly niche museum in rural England. Its primary focus, as one would surmise, is on the international sport of rowing and on the natural history of the Thames. There are also permanent exhibitions dedicated to the history of Henley and to 20th-century artist John Piper, whose work focused on the British landscape. An immersive, family-friendly Wind in the Willows “experience” opened in 2004.
Despite decent foot traffic, revenue driven by visitor admissions—a main source of income—simply didn’t come close to matching the cost of maintaining the building. There was a “disconnect there that we weren’t able to solve,” as Sandhu described it. “It’s fantastic architecturally and visually,” he added of the museum’s purpose-built home. But it is “huge and takes a lot of looking after.”
Confirming the closure, the namesake foundation that operates the venue told Museums Journal in a statement that “a key factor behind the failure of the enterprise has been the scale of the building and subsequent cost to maintain it, which is way beyond that of a specialist museum in a small market town.” The foundation added that a “new use for the building needs to be found urgently” and that a new museum could occupy part of it, “but such a museum cannot support the building or manage it going forward.”
News of the River & Rowing Museum’s shuttering isn’t entirely surprising. In February, shortly after museum director Josh O’ Connor announced his departure after a relatively short stint, the board of trustees publicly stated that the current operational model wasn’t “viable in the long-term” and that permanent closure was an option down the road as a result of financial duress.
While some museums have enjoyed high-profile revivals this summer, others across the globe have experienced turbulence of varying magnitudes. Institutions large and small across the U.S. are grappling with the Trump administration’s severing of vital federal funding for the arts and humanities; in overtourism-plagued Paris, the Louvre was temporarily closed in June due to chronic understaffing; and multiple Smithsonian museums in Washington, D.C., were shuttered for several days earlier this month due to HVAC issues.
A notice on the River & Rowing Museum’s website says that it is “in the process of reaching out to patrons, annual pass holders, and lenders,” adding: “We have lots to enjoy before we close.”
