William Morris Gallery in London reopens on Saturday after £1.5 million rebuild, with a new exhibition on “radical life”

The William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow (London) reopens this Saturday, October 3, after a major rebuild and rehang project worth around £1.5 million — the first since the 2012 rebuild — on the 130th anniversary of William Morris’s death, as USA Art News reports. The entire collection has been reorganized across six exhibition spaces with a more “home-like” approach: according to architect Sam Jacob, the aim was to bring the building a “domestic sensibility”, while a hand-blown lamp by Stewart Hearn hangs above the entrance door to make the space “feel like home, not intimidating”, said director Hadrian Garrard.

The gallery also addresses Morris’s contradictory sides: born into privilege, but with socialist ideals; he wanted beautiful objects for everyone, but Morris & Co. produced them only for the rich. A copper information desk serves as a reminder of the Devon Great Consols mine — Morris’s father invested there, where workers, including children, worked in harsh conditions — while a salon with a “socialist” red ceiling against luxurious walls displays objects that clash with each other: a luxury textile opposite a bag of socialist pamphlets.

Among the new objects exhibited for the first time are Jane Morris’s dress from the painting “La Belle Iseult” (1858, Tate Britain), the Hammersmith Socialist League banner (on loan from the Working Class Movement Library) and a lock of Morris’s grey hair. Morris’s bust is being removed from the hall — the gallery, as the team said, “does not exist to worship heroes”. New attention is paid to the influence of Islamic art and to the women in his life, his daughters May and Jenny.

The new “Morris Today” project space is expected to open in 2027. The project is funded by the Garfield Weston Foundation, the Wolfson Foundation and Waltham Forest Council. The reopening is accompanied by the exhibition “Earthly Paradise: Radical Living in the UK” (October 3, 2026 – March 28, 2027).