Annual Review
Annual Review
Download the Museum's Annual Review 2009-10
- Annual Review 2009-10 (30pp, PDF, 3.5MB)
Contents of the Annual Review 2009-10
4 Chairman’s foreword
5 Director’s introduction
7 Activities, achievements and performance
8 Exhibitions
10 Royal Observatory, Greenwich
11 International Year of Astronomy
12 Learning
15 Awards
16
Expertise
18 Collections
20 Membership and Development
21 Supporters
22 People
23 Sammy Ofer Wing
24 Finance
27 Trustees and Executive
Finance
View full information on the Museum's consolidated accounts for 2009-10
From the Chairman’s foreword
The year covered by this report has been truly notable for Greenwich and the National Maritime Museum. As we build up to 2012 and the 75th anniversary of the opening of the Museum, it is very pleasing to be able to report so positively on several significant matters.
On 5 January 2010, HM The Queen granted Royal Borough status to the London Borough of Greenwich. This is in recognition of the close links forged between Greenwich and royalty, from the Middle Ages to the present day. It also recognizes the Borough’s global significance as the home of the Prime Meridian, Greenwich Mean Time and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Royal status will formally be conferred in the year of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, which also falls in 2012, when our major exhibition telling the story of the Thames through the ages opens as the first large-scale show in the Museum’s new Sammy Ofer Wing.
Lord Sterling of Plaistow, Chairman of the Board of Trustees
From the Director's introduction
I am delighted to report that 2009–10 was an excellent year for our visitor attendance. Total visits to the Museum’s three sites reached 2.4 million, a record high and 15% above last year’s all-time record.
Helped by the increase in site visits, our retail sales for 2009–10 were the highest ever achieved, at £1.64 million… We were also very pleased to achieve a 37% rise in attendances and a 56% increase in revenue on the previous year at the Peter Harrison Planetarium.
It is particularly gratifying when our achievements are recognized by others and I am very pleased that the Museum was named Visitor Attraction of the Year at the Visit London tourism awards in 2009. The programme of events marking International Year of Astronomy at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, was also named Best Tourism Experience, and one of our gallery assistants, Nick Babbs, won the bronze award for Outstanding Customer Service.
There were two further awards over the year – our Solar Stormwatch website was named Best Innovative Site at the international ‘Museums and the Web’ conference in Denver, while the book Alan Villiers: Voyager of the Winds by Kate Lance, published by NMM, won the Mountbatten Maritime Award at the 2009 Maritime Foundation Maritime Media Awards.
Kevin Fewster, AM, Director