The Fan Museum is the first and only museum in the UK devoted in its entirety to all aspects of the ancient art and craft of the fan.

The museum owes its existence to the vision of Hélène Alexander and her late husband, A.V (Dicky) Alexander. When the museum opened its doors to the public back in 1991, the Alexander’s had already been working on the project for some five years. Hélène, over a prolonged period, had amassed an internationally significant collection of fans, fan leaves and associated literature (now numbering over 4000 objects) and the founding of The Fan Museum reflected her desire to promote, conserve, and display fans to a wide audience. In the intermittent years, the museum has staged over sixty temporary exhibitions covering a diverse range of themes: from “Children in Fans” through to “Imperial Fans from The Hermitage”, visitors to the Greenwich based museum have been treated to exhibitions of great depth and artistic merit.