Opening our minds has made Leighton House relevant

Historic houses are at a crossroads. Beautiful and important places that they are, too often they speak to themselves – preserved, polished and frequently overlooked by the people living just beyond their gates. 

When Leighton House reopened in 2022 after a £9.6m overhaul, we faced the question that haunts every heritage site: how do you make the past feel relevant to the present? 

The answer was to open the doors – literally. Access to the cafe, shop, permanent displays, exhibition gallery and garden in the new east wing is free. It sounds simple, but it’s been a game changer. People now use the building rather than just visit it. It’s a place to meet, work and breathe. Rather than a Victorian time capsule, it’s a public space. 

And crucially, it doesn’t look like a heritage cliche. The centrepiece of the new wing is Oneness, an 11m-high mural by Iranian artist Shahrzad Ghaffari – Leighton House’s first contemporary commission on permanent display. Its vivid abstraction gives the 19th-century home a jolt of renewed energy. It’s not decoration; it’s dialogue, establishing a bridge between old and new. 

We’ve also grasped that relevance means opening up more than just our doors. A 2023 partnership with the Barakat Trust and Arab British Centre brought British-Lebanese artist Nour Hage together with local co-producers to create Our Garden, a stitched artwork inspired by the house’s interiors. What began as museum workshops lives on in local libraries and community circles. This isn’t about outreach, but genuine ownership. 

That spirit continues as Leighton House marks its 100th anniversary with a special programme running this year and next. This includes an invitation to the public to share their memories of the museum; the unveiling of new commissions including paper artworks by Annemarieke Kloosterhof that recreate lost treasures from the collection, now on view; and a focus on the Arab Hall and its meaning for contemporary audiences.

What’s worked is free access, creative risk, real collaboration and, above all, listening. 

What doesn’t? Assumptions. Designing programmes for an imagined “community”. Treating collaboration as a tick-box exercise. Waiting for audiences to turn up. The days of “if you build it, they will come” are over.
If museums want new audiences, they must go where the audiences are – schools, youth clubs, parks, online. 

Good programming starts with humility. The worst cultural work happens when institutions speak for people, rather than with them. Heritage professionals aren’t always the experts on meaning; sometimes the community is. Handing over creative control can be uncomfortable – but it’s where transformation occurs. 

The approach to interpretation at Leighton House also breaks the mould. Instead of static labels, it experiments with film, sound and scent. For the Perspectives on the Arab Hall audio tour (2023), we invited participants from diverse backgrounds to share what the space meant to them – personal, moving and more insightful than any curator’s essay. 

We still tread a fine line. Some visitors want reverence; others want immersion. The trick is to balance the hush of history with the buzz of life. Live music, pop-up displays and the use of technology don’t destroy heritage – they remind us that it’s alive. 

Leighton House isn’t perfect, but it proves that when you open the doors – and your mind – the past has lots to say to the present.

Daniel Robbins is the senior curator at Leighton House and Sambourne House, both in London