National Museum Cardiff (), formerly known as the National Museum of Wales, is a museum and art gallery in Cardiff, Wales. The museum is part of the wider network of Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales. Entry is kept free by a grant from the Welsh Government. In February 2025 the museum announced a temporary closure due to maintenance funding issues.
History
The National Museum of Wales was founded in 1905, with its royal charter granted in 1907. Part of the bid for Cardiff to obtain the National Museum for Wales included the gift of the Cardiff Museum Collection, then known as "Welsh Museum of Natural History, Archaeology and Art," which was formally handed over in 1912. The Cardiff Museum was sharing the building of Cardiff Library, and was a sub-department of the library until 1893. Construction of a new building in the civic complex of Cathays Park began in 1912, but owing to the First World War it did not open to the public until 1922, with the official opening taking place in 1927. The architects were Arnold Dunbar Smith and Cecil Brewer, although the building as it now stands is a heavily truncated version of their design.
The sculpture scheme for the building was devised by Sir W. Goscombe John and consisted of the groups Prehistoric Period and Classic Period by Gilbert Bayes as well as Learning, Mining, and Shipping by Thomas J Clapperton, Art by Bertram Pegram, Medieval Period by Richard Garbe, Music by David Evans, and others. D. Arthur Thomas was commissioned to produce a model for the dragons, and A. Bertram Pegram to produce a model for the lions that were placed around the base of the dome.
Present
The museum has collections of botany, fine and applied art, geology, and zoology. Archaeology has been moved to the St Fagans National Museum of History.
In 2011, with funding from the Clore Duffield Foundation, the former Glanely Gallery was transformed into the Clore Discovery Centre, which offers hands-on exploration of the museum's 7.5 million items that are normally in storage, including insects, fossils and Bronze Age weapons. School groups, formal and informal groups can also be accommodated but should book in advance.
Between 2022-2024 internal management disputes between the-then president of the museum, Roger Lewis, who had formerly run the Welsh Rugby Union, and the-then director-general, David Anderson, saw both leave the museum. The handling of the dispute, which concluded with a settlement to Mr Anderson of £325,000, with legal bills bringing the total cost to the Senedd of over £600,000, drew criticism from Audit Wales.
Black Lives Matter movement
Following the removal of the Statue of Edward Colston in Bristol on 6 June 2020, Wales Online reported on a similar campaign to remove monuments to Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas Picton, a Welsh soldier, in Carmarthen and Cardiff. While Picton was revered as a hero in the 19th century after dying at the Battle of Waterloo, the most senior British Army officer to lose his life, his previous record as governor of Trinidad was controversial even at the time, and saw him convicted of widespread abuse of the island's population, including the use of torture.