Worthing Museum and Art Gallery

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Worthing Museum and Art Gallery in the centre of Worthing is the largest museum in West Sussex. It will celebrate its centenary in 2008.

[edit] Collections & Displays

Worthing Museum and Art Gallery has one of the largest costume and textile collections in the UK. The 19th century and 20th century galleries display just a tiny fraction of the museum's contents. The current display in the 19th century gallery looks at the changing shape of women during the century. The 20th century gallery concentrates on women's fashions including pictures of local residents through the ages. There is also a small menswear display.

The museum also holds records for all archaeological finds between the rivers Adur and Arun. This includes the John Pull Collection of neolithic flint mines, featured on the television series Time Team, the Patching hoard of gold coins, an Anglo-Saxon long boat, and the Highdown Goblet - an Ancient Egyptian glass vase with an Ancient Greek inscription, found at the Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Highdown.

The museum has over 900 dolls and a collection of toys from the Georgian period to the present day, in its Juvenilia collection, along with the Colin Mears Collection of 2000 objects documenting the history of 20th Century Childhood. It also has social history, numismatics, and fine and decorative art collections, which includes Bianca (1869), a painting by William Holman Hunt.