The weekly feature rounds up the latest updates in museum appointments, openings, funding and new exhibitions from across the UK.
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Openings and closures
Preston Park Museum’s new two-storey exhibition space will open to the public on Saturday 13 September following a multi-million pound extension, featuring interactive galleries, touring exhibition spaces, and hundreds of previously unseen collection items. While the museum is closed for final preparations, visitors can still access the newly refurbished park facilities including an upgraded café, play area, and additional car parking.
Plans for the construction of a museum and heritage attraction in Liverpool named after comedian Sir Ken Dodd have been axed after funding shortfalls. The ‘Sir Ken Dodd Happiness Centre’ was to be constructed next door to the Royal Court Theatre in Liverpool, and was set to both exhibit the comedian’s personal collection of artefacts and joke books, alongside broader comedy history, public activities, events and performances.
Exhibitions
The National Army Museum in London presents ‘Beyond Burma: Forgotten Armies’, marking the 80th anniversary of VJ Day and examining the multinational forces that fought in Burma during the Second World War. The exhibition displays rarely seen weapons, medals, uniforms and equipment, alongside first-hand accounts from soldiers and leaders including Field Marshal Sir William Slim, exploring the challenges of jungle warfare, monsoon conditions and tropical disease. The exhibition runs from 16 September 2025 to 13 April 2026.
Brighton & Hove Albion FC’s new exhibition will chart the club’s extraordinary rise from the fan-led battle to save the club in the late 1990s through to securing Premier League status and European football qualification. The exhibition will showcase treasured memorabilia, unforgettable match moments and personal stories from across the Seagulls’ family, housed in a 93-square-metre gallery space on the upper floor of Brighton Museum & Art Gallery in Brighton. The exhibition opens in August 2026 to celebrate the club’s 125th anniversary.
Hayward Gallery in London presents ‘Val Lee: The Presence of Solitude’, the first UK solo exhibition by Taiwanese artist Val Lee, featuring film, photography and costume works exploring isolation and solitude. The exhibition includes new iterations of ‘Valley in the Minibus’ (2024) with three full body costumes and veiled masks on display, and ‘The Sorrowful Football Team’ (2025) presented as a slide projection depicting a blind football team in Northern Japan. 7 October 2025 – 11 January 2026.
‘Perthshire Illustrated’ at Perth Museum in Perth features over fifty objects, paintings and maps exploring Perthshire’s landscapes from the late 18th century to the present day. The exhibition includes works by Horatio McCulloch, Katsushika Hokusai, Alexander Nasmyth and JD Fergusson, with specific pieces such as View of Dunkeld on the River Tay by Alexander Naysmith, Loch Tay Through Trees by Tarbet Henderson, and View of Strathearn looking west with a view of Comrie and Ben by John Knox. The exhibition runs 03 October 2025 – 08 December 2025.
The Science Museum in London has launched ‘Vanishing Africa’, an online exhibition featuring photographs by Kenyan-born photographer Mirella Ricciardi documenting East Africa’s Indigenous peoples including the Maasai, Samburu, Turkana, Orma, Pokot and Rendille. The exhibition displays visual records taken over two years in the 1960s, including images of fishermen on Lake Turkana and the Maasai with Mount Kilimanjaro in the distance, alongside insights from local communities about climate change impacts over six decades. The exhibition was curated by Dr Roger Highfield and Dr Julia Knights in collaboration with Amina Ricciardi-Dempsey and launched to celebrate the UK/Africa Season of Culture ahead of COP30.
‘The Future Was Then’ at The Cartoon Museum showcases over 80 pages of original comic art and additional items exploring humanity’s future from 1990 to 4000 AD. The exhibition includes original artwork from Tank Girl, Judge Dredd, Black Mirror, Buck Rogers and Thunderbirds, featuring work by legendary artists such as Jamie Hewlett, Frank Bellamy and Sydney Jordan, alongside never-before-displayed items from Phoo Action by Jamie Hewlett & Mat Wakeham. The exhibition runs 4 October 2025 – 21 March 2026.
‘Common Threads’ exhibitions at Selly Manor Museum in Birmingham and Packwood House in Warwickshire display fragments of 17th-century tapestries that were previously believed to be from the same larger piece. The exhibitions feature Selly Manor’s Achilles tapestry fragment and Packwood House’s Two Women tapestry fragment shown side by side for the first time in living memory, exploring the histories of both pieces and the connections between the Tudor house collections. The exhibition runs 12 August 2025 – 16 October 2025 at Selly Manor Museum and 19 January 2026 – 5 April 2026 at Packwood House.
Tate Modern in London presents ‘Theatre Picasso’, an exhibition staged by contemporary artist Wu Tsang and curator Enrique Fuenteblanca marking the centenary of Picasso’s ‘The Three Dancers’. The exhibition transforms the gallery space into a theatre displaying over 45 works by Picasso from Tate’s collection alongside key European loans, including paintings, sculpture, textiles and works on paper, some never seen in the UK before. The exhibition runs 17 September 2025 – 12 April 2026.
Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge presents ‘Bound Together: Leather from Northern Nigeria’, displaying century-old Nigerian leather objects alongside designer bookbindings made in Britain using Nigerian goatskins. The exhibition features a saddlebag, manuscript cover, cushion case, and riding boots from the Hausa people, plus works by designers Edgar Mansfield, Jeff Clements, Trevor Jones, and Sybil Pye, with objects drawn from the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University Library, Botanic Garden, and Cambridge University Press. 19 August 2025 – 8 February 2026.
Funding
Grantham Museum will close for five weeks starting August 25 for a £162,000 renovation funded by the Government’s Future High Street Fund, including new heating, kitchen facilities, and basement ventilation systems. The project aims to prepare the museum for the eventual return of the 20,000-item Grantham Collection, which has been in storage since 2010, with the museum set to reopen in October for Margaret Thatcher centenary events.
