Imperial War Museum to close Lord Ashcroft Gallery housing Victoria Crosses

The Imperial War Museum in London will close the Lord Ashcroft Gallery, ending a 15-year public display of Victoria Crosses and George Crosses that drew visitors from around the world to the highest decorations for gallantry in Britain and the Commonwealth. The museum said the decision aligns with a broader plan to devote space to items from its 33 million-item collection and to tell more stories from conflicts that resonate with contemporary audiences, including those in living memory. The gallery has housed the medals since 2010, a centerpiece of a collection built by Lord Ashcroft over four decades and funded in part by his purchase and donation of display space.

Critics have seized on the move as part of a broader shift at the IWM toward what detractors call a more diversified, or “woke,” approach to war history. The museum has embraced wider narratives that examine the social and political contexts of conflicts, not solely acts of individual heroism. Supporters say the change reflects a modern audience’s interest in a fuller spectrum of wartime experience. As part of the shift, the IWM has reorganized governance in recent months with three additional trustees appointed by Prime Minister Keir Starmer, including Dame Janet Beer, a veteran higher-education administrator. The new appointments, which run through 2029, further shape the museum’s direction.

For Lord Ashcroft, the gallery was the physical home for a collection he values at about £70 million and had planned to gift to the IWM after his death. He describes the medals as a tangible record of acts of self-sacrifice and courage that deserve public display. He funded the Lord Ashcroft Gallery with about £5 million to house the collection and related memorabilia, arguing that the museum’s decision to close the display amounts to a reversal of a long project designed to honor the recipients of the Victoria Cross and George Cross. He has said he will look for an alternative venue to share the collection with the public, even as he acknowledges that the closures will take the medals out of public view for the foreseeable future.

The move comes as the IWM seeks to reframe its exhibitions around a broader set of perspectives on conflict. In recent years, the museum has hosted displays that range from combat hardware and tactical history to survivor narratives and gendered experiences of war. For many visitors, the loss of the Ashcroft display removes a concentrated collection that connected individual acts of gallantry to a long arc of military history dating back to the Crimean War. The gallery’s closure also means that several well-known VC and Bar recipients—such as Captain Noel Chavasse, a two-time VC winner, and Sergeant Norman Jackson, who earned the VC for actions during a bombing raid over Germany in 1944—will be represented in public displays no longer, at least for the time being.

As of this Tuesday, visitors to the IWM will no longer be able to learn about Jackson’s bravery in the face of devastating damage to his aircraft, nor about Chavasse’s repeated gallantry on the Western Front. Chavasse’s story—an Olympic athlete who served as a regimental medical officer and saved numerous soldiers under fire during the Great War—was one of the gallery’s anchors, and Jackson’s act of self-sacrifice as his Lancaster burned over enemy territory underlines the breadth of courage celebrated in the collection. Both figures have long been used to illustrate the human cost and nested stories of wartime duty, sacrifice and leadership. The gallery’s closing thus removes not just artifacts, but a curated pathway through some of the most widely cited episodes of 20th-century warfare.

The IWM has defended its decision as part of an institution-wide effort to “embed diversity” and broaden audiences by presenting a wider range of experiences and perspectives from conflicts across the last two centuries. Critics, however, contend that the move marginalizes the story of individual bravery and the men and women who earned Britain and the Commonwealth’s top medals. The discussion around the Lord Ashcroft collection has unfolded in public over months, with supporters urging that the medals be kept accessible to the public and seen in the context of the other thousands of items the IWM houses.

In public statements and writings, Lord Ashcroft has framed the medals as living stories that should be available to inspire future generations. He has noted that the gallery space he funded remains a valuable part of his broader aim to honor those who faced extreme danger with clear, verifiable accounts of resilience and service. He said he would honor his commitment to public access by seeking another venue for the collection while continuing to support efforts to tell the broader stories of war and its consequences.

The IWM’s leadership has not indicated an immediate reversal of the decision, but the gallery’s closure underscores a broader debate about how museums balance reverence for valor with a commitment to inclusive storytelling. For many veterans, families and visitors, the move raises questions about whether the public memory of bravery can be preserved within a changing curatorial framework—or if the public deserves an unbroken through-line from the legends of Victoria Cross and George Cross recipients to today’s conflicts and their lessons.

The gallery’s closing does not erase the history of Britain’s most decorated servicemen and women, but it does reposition how those histories are presented. As the IWM continues to reimagine its exhibitions, observers will watch closely to see how the museum threads stories of courage alongside the complex social, political and ethical dimensions of war in the 21st century. For Lord Ashcroft, the broader message is clear: even as institutions evolve, the stories of gallantry will endure, whether within the walls of a single gallery or in a new public-facing space dedicated to the brave across generations.