Dispersals

Sir Henry Wellcome's museum collection

A collection of mainly three-dimensional objects, this material is what remained after the Trustees had disposed of the majority of the object collections following Wellcome’s death. It is no longer added to.

The most significant part of this collection, comprising over 117,000 historic items relating to medical history and the history of science more generally, has been on long-term loan to the Science Museum since 1976. We are dependent on borrowing material from this collection for exhibitions.

Other smaller elements of the collection, including a group of Egyptian stelai and a collection of classical statuary, are on long-term loan at other institutions. These are foundational collections in the context of some of the recipient museums e.g. History of the Egypt Centre - Y Ganolfan Eifftaidd / Egypt Centre (swan.ac.uk) which holds around 4,500 of our objects.

This 2025 article by Ken Griffin at the Egypt Centre, Swansea is comprehensive, covering Wellcome's collecting and purchasing of objects from Egypt, as well as later dispersal of objects from the WHMM. it is in African Arts, Vol 28 (1), Spring 2025

See Egypt Centre youtube channel for presentations on the dispersal.

Stock reply

Items on loan to Egypt Centre

Dear [name]

Thank you for contacting Wellcome Collection.

Many of the objects held in what was known as the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum Wellcome were redistributed to other museums after Henry Wellcome’s death, and I think most of [items] you are interested in researching were sent to Swansea in 1971 where they now form part of the collection of the Egypt Centre. This collection can be searched online, and I ran a sample search on ‘Parthian’ and you can see the results here. For more information on Wellcome’s dispersal of it’s collection please take a look at the presentations on the Egypt Centre’s You Tube channel.

I hope this helps with your research,