07/21/2004 Entry: "Royal Geographic Society Opens to Public"
Explorer's Remembered in new Museum The London headquarters of one of Britain’s most hallowed institutions, The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers), founded in 1830, has opened to the public for the first time. As well as the opening of a new study centre, there is a free permanent exhibition of photographs relating to some of the world’s most famous explorers.
Among the highlights of the society’s collection, which can be accessed by researchers, are Dr. Livingstone’s watercolour sketches of the Victoria Falls in Africa; the diaries of Lord Hunt who led the first successful ascent of Mount Everest; Charles Darwin’s pocket sextant used on HMS Beagle; and William Morris’s copy of Ptolemy’s “Cosmographia”, an early map of 1486.
The new facilities include a modern, glazed entrance on Exhibition Road, leading to a public exhibition space, educational facilities and a 70-seat reading room. It is part of an “Unlocking the Archives” project which gives full public access to the organisation’s treasures.
The exhibition, at 1 Kensington Gore, London SW7, is open Mondays to Fridays excluding public holidays, admission is free but entry to the reading room is £10.
