Our vision and mission

The Fitzwilliam Museum is widely considered the world’s outstanding university art collection. We care for works of art and material culture from Europe, Egypt and Asia of exceptional international importance, works that connect people across cultures and time. Founded in 1816 ‘for the increase of learning’, the Fitzwilliam has long been both a great public cultural asset and an extraordinary scholarly resource – local, regional, national and global.

Our vision

The Fitzwilliam Museum: opening up the past to transform our futures.

Our mission

We use art, objects, spaces and experiences to inspire reflection, connection and creativity

Our values

The Museum and our projects will always be inclusive, thoughtful, distinctive, welcoming, rigorous, challenging, unexpected, uplifting and entertaining.

Our decision-making will be guided by these values

Our strategic priorities

1. Developing our methods for ensuring access to culture for all
2. Ensuring a multiplicity of voices and approaches in our research
3. Embracing a global history of art and material culture
4. Creating immersive and interactive exhibitions and displays
5. Providing a distinctive, sector-leading digital museum experience
6. Fully supporting the collective ambitions of the University of CambridgeMuseums (UCM)
7. Building, maintaining and improving the care of the collection
8. Developing an extraordinary building that unites and realises these aims

To ensure our success, we will need:

9. A work and management culture for the Fitzwilliam that fulfils our mission
10. An organisational structure that sustains our priorities
11. A happy, diverse, inclusive and open-minded working community
12. Appropriate and sustainable resourcing and revenue