Opening hours

Tue - Sat: 10am - 4:45pm
Closed: Sundays, Mondays and Bank Holidays

Extraordinary closures

Please note that the museum will be closed as detailed below:

Mummy on the move!
The Egyptian gallery will be closed from the 28 April. The Mummy will reappear when the new Ancient Civilisations gallery opens on the 8 June

Thursday 24 May
The Philbrick Fine Art Gallery will be closed from 2pm for lecture preparations.

Thursday 27 September
The Philbrick Fine Art Gallery will be closed from 2pm for lecture preparations.

Saturday 24 November
The Museum and Library will be closed for the RIC Members Only day.

We apologize for any inconvenience that this may cause.

"I live and work in Penzance. My father’s forebears, some of whom were born in Newlyn, worked as fishermen, seamen, ropers and sail makers. One of these, Richard Hollow, my grandfather, served aboard Penzance registered Brilliant in the 1880’s. He later became master of the 109ft three-mast sailing ship Pride of the Channel, which was built in Charlestown in 1873 and was later based in Fowey. He was tragically wrecked and drowned with all crew save one, in a violent storm in the Bay of Biscay on his way home from the West Indies with a cargo of rum.

As a child I loved to draw and would spend hours drawing specimens of fungi and plants. I even won a prize from the Children’s Royal Drawing Society for works entitled ‘Nature Studies’. I feel I have come a long journey to my most recent work, a five foot long painting also called ‘Nature Study’ which depicts about nineteen marine creatures and one man!

Newlyn today is still one of the busiest and most important fishing ports in the UK, although the number of trawlers based there has diminished. In the late 19th century a group of painters, mainly immigrant to Cornwall ‘discovered’ Newlyn. Their paintings of the fishing community, mainly narrative, often sentimental, became known and loved throughout the world. By contrast, today’s fishing industry has become mechanised with trawlers going further afield and spending longer at sea.

But it is this mechanisation that I love to paint. These wonderful natural working men out there, far on the Atlantic swell, along with the heavy machinery, massive trawls and lifting gear, waves, sky, fish – what more could one wish for?" Bridget Keen