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The Fan Museum

Museum
The Fan Museum
Photo: Visit Greenwich from Greenwich, United Kingdom, Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 2.0 · Report the wrong picture

What is recorded here

The Fan Museum opened in 1991 in two restored early Georgian houses built in 1721. Hélène and Dickie Alexander created the first museum devoted wholly to fans, using the domestic rooms and later garden building to display craft, fashion and social meaning across more than a thousand years.

Read the whole record

The Fan Museum opened in 1991 in two restored early Georgian houses built in 1721. Hélène and Dickie Alexander created the first museum devoted wholly to fans, using the domestic rooms and later garden building to display craft, fashion and social meaning across more than a thousand years.

What this place is

The museum occupies a pair of joined early Georgian town houses in Greenwich and holds a specialist collection of fans and fan-making material.

People and events

Collectors Hélène and Dickie Alexander founded the museum and opened it in 1991 after the two 1721 houses had been carefully restored for public use.

How it was used

The buildings began as homes; their rooms now support changing displays that explain fans as works of art, skilled products, fashion and social signals.

What survives

The listed house fronts, Georgian rooms, garden and orangery setting survive with a collection spanning more than a thousand years of fan history.

Why it mattered

It established the first museum devoted entirely to fans and placed a fragile, often overlooked art form in a restored domestic setting suited to its use.

Sources for this account

Sources checked 16 August 2026.

From OpenStreetMap (© OpenStreetMap contributors) n910356813

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Photo credits
  • N Chadwick, Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0
  • Keith Cook, Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0
  • wfmillar, Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0
  • Colin Smith, Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0
  • Endim8, Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 4.0
  • Peter Trimming, Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0
  • Ian Taylor, Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0
  • Peter Whatley, Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0
  • Creekside, Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0
  • Dudley Miles, Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0
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