The Wellcome Collection is a museum and library based at 183 Euston Road, London, displaying a mixture of medical artefacts and original artworks exploring “ideas about the connections between medicine, life and art”. Founded in 2007, Wellcome Collection now attracts over 700,000 visitors per year[citation needed] and is advertised as “the free destination for the incurably curious”. The venue offers contemporary and historic exhibitions and collections, the Wellcome Library, a caf?, a bookshop and conference facilities.
Wellcome Collection is part of the Wellcome Trust, founded by Sir Henry Solomon Wellcome (1853?1936). An extensive and enthusiastic traveller, Henry Wellcome amassed a huge collection of books, paintings and objects on the theme of historical development of medicine worldwide. There was an earlier Wellcome Historical Medical Museum at 54a Wigmore Street, housing artefacts from around the world.]
The Wellcome Trust moved its administrative offices into their new Gibbs Building (designed for the Trust by Michael Hopkins and Partners) on the adjoining site in Euston Road, completed 2004: thereby creating an opportunity for a new public venue in the old Wellcome Building. The collection opened to the public in June 2007. Due to its historical holdings, the Wellcome Collection is a member of The London Museums of Health & Medicine group.
Having been open since 2007, Wellcome Collection re-opened with additional public spaces in October 2015.