A fashion history: piece by piece
Fashion: Central Saint Martins brings together garments, photography and drawings – among other things – to explore facets of our celebrated Fashion programme.
Your creative future starts here:
Museum & Study Collection
We regret that due to the Covid-19 pandemic we have had to shut the CSM Museum & Study Collection to visitors. If you have a research enquiry please contact us at the usual address. Staff, who are temporarily working off-site, will do their best to help.
The history of the Museum & Study Collection
Object-led Wellbeing: Mobilising Museum Collections for Social Good
The Museum & Study Collection tells the story of Central Saint Martins’ rich history. The collection contains work produced by staff and students, a large art and design teaching collection, the British Artists’ Film and Video Collection, and some historical college records.
The teaching collection spans the 13th century to the present, and includes early printed books, prints, illuminated manuscripts, embroideries, 1920s German film posters, textiles and garments. We hold material created by CSM staff and students over the last one hundred years, and have collected from degree shows for the past two decades. The collection is open to everyone for inspiration and information.
Explore
Museum exhibitions
See our collection displayed in new ways in the Museum Window Gallery on The Crossing or the Lethaby Gallery
Visit
Find out about our public study room, how to book a research visit or group sessions, and how to bring objects to CSM classes
Online catalogue
Explore our rich collections in detail
Collection strengths
Discover the collection’s diversity and depth
Enquiries
Ask about our collections
Howard Asher's geometric designs inspire many students making new works in the digital age
Curator Sarah Campbell on a piece by MA Industrial Design grad Thomas Ballhatchet
Head of the Museum & Study Collection Judy Willcocks talks about conservation
Anna Buruma on Joyce Clissold, textile designer, printmaker, former teacher and alum
More information
@CSMMuseum Tweets
@CsmMuseum: 24 March 2020
Object of the week: Fabio Bibiano's green tinted photographic series, 'Untitled', from 2008. https://t.co/x91wEDbPsx
@CsmMuseum: 20 March 2020
#Spring is in the air! Can you feel it coming? Joyce Clissold's 1930s colourful design of lambs frolicking in scale-shaped 'hills', is printed on raw silk. https://t.co/Qwh3epjpld
@CsmMuseum: 18 March 2020
#femaleartistsinfocus: Celia Fiennes (1902-1998) Object: A wood engraved portrait of a young woman, possibly a self portrait, circa 1930. Fiennes was an early wood engraving student of Noel Rooke, who she later married in 1932. By that time, Fiennes stopped wood engraving. https://t.co/uknCfLIWee
@CsmMuseum: 17 March 2020
Object of the week: Doris Cheng's 'Multi-purpose wrap' dress. Made from tiered organza and tulle wrap, with stuffed hands attached, and lined with silk satin printed with a gun motif. https://t.co/dtleIAIsM7
Museum & Study Collection stories
Material matters
What does a sustainable material revolution look like? Billie Coxhead, Co-ordinator of the Materials and Products Collection, talks through some recent acquisitions from algae blooms and bacteria to abattoir waste.
Our new ever-changing typeface
Introducing CSM Shifts, the bespoke typeface at the heart of the College’s new visual style, designed by Boyle&Perks and Colophon Foundry
Future Care: Curating the Virtual
Judy Willcocks, Head of Museum & Study Collection at Central Saint Martins, explains how one student’s work began a vital conversation with Tate, Victoria & Albert Museum and BFI on the preservation of virtual reality.
Our policies
- Access [PDF 80kb]
- Collections Care and Conservation [PDF 100kb]
- Collections Development [PDF 90kb]
- Data Protection [PDF 50kb]
- Documentation [PDF 70kb]
- Museum Environment Sustainability [PDF 80kb]
- Rights and Reproductions [PDF 70kb]
- Safeguarding [PDF 80kb]
- Volunteers [PDF 60kb]