The Stand or Fall exhibition - a magnificent immersive kaleidoscope of Albion heritage

New permanent exhibition, which opens on 15 August at Brighton Museum & Art Gallery, brings the club's history vividly to life.

Nick Szczepanik

2026-08-14T10:00+01:00

The superbly constructed model combining so many elements of the club's story from the Goldstone to the Amex forms the centrepiece of the exhibition. 📷Michael Cheetham

If you have a friend or family member who – for some inexplicable reason – does not know the history of our favourite football club, then why not take them along to Brighton & Hove Albion: Stand Or Fall, the new exhibition at Brighton Museum & Art Gallery to mark the club’s 125th anniversary season?

Here, a magnificent immersive kaleidoscope of Albion heritage will bring that history to life far more vividly than your (or my) reminiscences of Peterborough away in 2010 ever could.

Visitors can watch footage of legendary goals from Jimmy Case, Bobby Zamora, Danny Cullip and more, inspect memorabilia, and read up on the club’s trials and triumphs, especially over the past three decades.

Paul Mullen, the club's chief operating officer, opens Stand or Fall with the museum's chief executive Hedley Swain. 📷 Michael Cheetham

Finally, when they have absorbed it all, they can test their newly-acquired knowledge on an interactive screen, with three levels of difficulty (better start them on ‘easy’).

You, of course, will have no trouble with the ‘difficult’ questions, because this is an exhibition for everyone with Albion in the hearts, whether veterans of the club’s promotion campaigns in the 1950s, regulars at WSL fixtures at Broadfield or youngsters who will be making their first visit to the Amex this season wearing their brand-new replica shirt.

The centrepiece of the exhibition is a meticulously-constructed model that perfectly illustrates how far we have come, blending elements of the Goldstone Ground, Withdean Stadium and the American Express Stadium.

Various pieces of key action are reconstructed in miniature in different areas of the pitch – Bobby Z’s Van Basten-like goal against Halifax Town, Stuart Storer running away to celebrate the last-ever goal at The Goldstone, the Solly March strike that won promotion to the Premier League.

📷Michael Cheetham

“I would say that it’s a great representation of the club’s history and it's done in a way that flows and I think the central exhibit will be the highlight for a lot of people,” former Albion manager Mark McGhee said. “All the stadiums are represented and even moments. I think it’s fantastic.”

Many who consider themselves expert painters of table football figures will still be awestruck by the microscopic level of detail – and accuracy – of the modelling. There is even a tiny Norman Cook in his favoured north-west corner of the Goldstone, complete with trademark Hawaiian shirt!

Elsewhere, you can shuffle cards to place on a wall of fame to decide your favourite Albion players of all time – I think I must have missed the John Crumplin card – or look at the programmes for Albion’s two FA Cup final appearances. And no, we don’t mean the 1983 final and replay, but 1983 and the women’s FA Cup final appearance last season, of course.

Jody East, the Creative Programme Manager at Brighton & Hove Museums, curated the exhibition and was keenly aware of the sensitivity required to pull together so many strands of the history of an institution central to so many people’s lives.

“It's been quite a scary prospect taking on the curation of such a subject and such a project because people hold it so dear to them. I know many people have lived it and it’s their journey and their story and I was a little intimidated in how to pull that all together to kind of really try and do it justice.

📷Michael Cheetham

“When I began talking to people, fans literally just outside the matches at the Amex, supporters’ clubs here in Brighton but also across the world, young people, teachers, it became very clear very quickly that this is not just a story about football, it’s a story about family, friendships and people coming together. So that’s really what’s at the heart of this new gallery and it’s absolutely been built around all of those conversations, those memories and those stories, the hard times and the good.

“It's not just about the history, it's also about looking forward and that’s something I think the Albion does really well. You embrace ambition and you’re always looking forward as well as looking back.”

📷Michael Cheetham

But what is football doing among the ethnography and ceramics galleries in a formal museum setting? “We look after the heritage of Brighton & Hove and certainly in the last 30 years the story of the Albion is almost a story of Brighton and Hove,” Hedley Swain, the museum’s chief executive, said.

“Any football club is at the heart of its community, but for Albion what they’ve been through in the last 30 years, losing the Goldstone, the years in the wilderness and then the amazing story of coming back to the Amex, is such a brilliant story because it is so tied up with the people of Brighton and Hove. And the fact that the club delivered on the pitch in parallel makes it even better and just the sort of story that we should be telling in the museum.”

Albion chief operating officer Paul Mullen cut the ribbon to open the exhibition. “When this club was founded in 1901, few could have really predicted the extraordinary journey we would embark on,” he said. “It encapsulates not just a collection of old shirts, season tickets, boots, matchday programmes, but it's also a living, breathing history of story, resilience, passion and the community, from fighting for our existence right through to taking on Europe’s best, you know, the club always refused to back down.”

True, but of course we also love the old shirts, season tickets, boots and programmes – not forgetting the fanzines that were in the vanguard during the ‘war years’ – and there are plenty here: Storer’s long-sleeved Sandtex-sponsored shirt from ’97, an old buttoned-up pre-war jersey, its blue and white stripes still bright and vivid, Lewis Dunk’s kit from last season, programmes from memorable cup ties and league occasions, the second ever ‘Gull’s Eye’, and many more items that you might have forgotten.

Believe me, the memories will come flooding back. And not just of the goals, the mazy dribbles and the great saves. There are images of the protests, demonstrations and marches as the fans rose up to rescue their club from those who would destroy it and then carry it forward to Withdean and then the Amex.

Stand or Fall is a permanent exhibition at the Brighton Museum in the Royal Pavilion. 📷Michael Cheetham

Needless to say, those days will never be forgotten by those who lived through them. But even if you were there you will not have seen some of these exhibits. In one frame is lifelong fan Atilla the Stockbroker’s hastily-written lyric sheet for We Want Falmer, his single from 2005 under the name of Seagulls Ska. Close by is a letter from John Prescott, then the Deputy Prime Minister, confirming planning permission for the new stadium.

“If there's one thing this exhibition also truly highlights, it's that the club is nothing without its people and the community,” Paul Mullen added. “It's about the dedicated and passionate fans who stood on the terraces, who rattled the collection buckets and many of the thousands who travelled miles to support our men’s and women’s teams across the UK and now Europe as well.

“As chief operating officer of the club, I also first-hand see the immense planning, logistics and operations that goes into the club day-to-day from our elite training facilities in Lancing, right through to the matchday experience at the Amex.

“But the soul of Brighton & Hove Albion isn’t found in the boardroom or the club offices, it’s about community and it’s right here in the history preserved and showcasing this fantastic exhibition. It’s appropriate that the location of the exhibition is in the heart of the community and not at the stadium. It opens up the club’s history to more people, to people visiting the city, our fans and our local relevant residents to come and see what an incredible journey this club has been on."