The world’s first vagina museum has raised enough funds to relocate to new premises after being forced to shut its doors earlier this year.
The London-based museum raised the £85,000 needed to secure a six-year lease in a twin pair of railway arches in east London.
The Vagina Museum raised a significant proportion of the money required by crowdfunding on GoFundMe, after closing in February.
Upon reaching the fundraising goal, the Vagina Museum tweeted: “We did it. Thank you, thank you, a thousand times thank you, all 2400 people who chose to help the Vagina Museum to grow and thrive!”
BIG CROWDFUNDING UPDATE! We have found our perfect space! It's a gorgeous pair of twin railway arches in East London. We have BIG plans for this space and we'll have the room to realise these plans. But there's a catch... https://t.co/jsp1PUUPWu
— Vagina Museum (@vagina_museum) May 17, 2023
The museum said the new premises features space for three galleries, an event space, and the possibility of expanding to provide a cafe.
The museum had said fundraising for a physical premises was a “now-or-never situation” and if it did not raise enough funds, the museum was “not going to be able to survive beyond a few months and all activities will cease”.
The project was launched in 2017 and started with pop-ups around the country, including at Green Man Festival, the Royal Institution, and the Freud Museum.
The Vagina Museum opened its first premises in Camden Market in 2019 and held its first exhibition, Muff Busters: Vagina Myths and How to Fight Them, in November 2019, which addressed common myths and misconceptions about vaginas and vulvas.
After moving to Bethnal Green, the museum hosted the exhibition Periods: A Brief History; and a permanent exhibition named From A to V, which explored activism and anatomy.
The Vagina Museum says around 200,000 people have visited its educational exhibitions since it opened to the public in 2019.
