Migration season: Banksy’s animal art heads to new London Museum – The Art Newspaper

One of Banksy’s famed animal-themed works—a police sentry box emblazoned with a shoal of piranhas—will go on show next year at the new London Museum.

The fishy work forms part of an animal themed series by the elusive street artist that appeared across London last summer. The sentry box initially stood on Ludgate Hill near the Old Bailey, but following Banksy’s intervention, the police moved the glass-panelled box to Guildhall Yard, an outdoor square in the City of London.

The City Of London Corporation, the local authority for the capital’s financial district, subsequently voted to donate the work to the museum. Sharon Ament, the London Museum’s director, says in a statement that the “only thing better than having a Banksy appear on the walls…is having a Banksy on display inside.”

The new London Museum is currently under construction at the historic Smithfield market in the centre of the city. The institution, formerly based at London Wall near the Barbican Centre, was previously called the Museum of London. Described as “one of Europe’s largest cultural infrastructure projects”, the new complex is designed by Stanton Williams and Asif Khan in partnership with the conservation architects Julian Harrap.

The site will open in two stages: the formerly derelict Victorian General Market, home to the museum’s permanent galleries, will open in 2026 and the Poultry Market, which houses the museum’s learning centre, temporary exhibition spaces and collection stores, will launch in 2028.

Meanwhile another animal work by Banksy—a painting of a goat standing on a ledge—was removed from the side of a building near Kew Bridge in west London, earlier this month. A statement on behalf of the building’s owner Boss & Co. gunmakers, said they made the decision as part of refurbishment works that were “essential for the long-term future of the property”. The future location of the work is not known.

Banksy’s works, which could fetch millions if sold privately, continue to be at risk of removal. In 2024, an outline of a howling lone wolf, another animal work which was painted onto a large satellite dish on a roof in Peckham, was stolen by two masked men with a ladder. In 2022, a Banksy mural sprayed on the wall of an electrical store in the coastal town of Lowestoft, Suffolk, in the East Anglia region of England was unceremoniously torn down and is believed to have been sold to a private buyer.