The weekly feature rounds up the latest updates in museum appointments, openings, funding and new exhibitions from across the UK.
Museum Moves is supported by DJW Projects Limited: DJW Projects Limited. DJW Projects Limited is recognised as one of the UK’s leading forces in the audio-visual industry, providing creative lighting, Audio Visual and multimedia solutions globally to achieve the ultimate technological experience, using sound, lighting, vision and interaction.
Appointments
The Holburne Museum in Bath has appointed Mervyn Metcalf as the new Chair of the Museum Board.Metcalf has served as a member of the Trustee Board since 2024 and brings finance charity sector experience.
Opening & closures
The Victoria and Albert Museum will double the size of its galleries dedicated to the Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Collection. The space will expand from four to seven rooms, opening on 14 March 2026.
V&A’s Gilbert Collection galleries to double in size for 2026 reopening
The Garden Museum in London is to begin the restoration of Benton End House and gardens in Suffolk, the former home of artist and gardener Sir Cedric Morris and partner Arthur Lett-Haines. The project is hoped to allow public access to the garden by next Summer.
Exhibitions
Qalqans: Protecting Crimean Tatar Heritage
Horniman Museum and Gardens | London
Opening: 25 October 2025 – Closing: 1 February 2026
The exhibition showcases the living culture of Crimean Tatars, the Indigenous people of Crimea, Ukraine. It features 12 photographs by modern Crimean Tatar master-ceramicist and artist Rustem Skybin, depicting colourful qalqans (traditional shields) which he recreated in ceramic. The decorative shields feature designs which echo ancient ornamental compositions that Skybin discovered on historic Tatar weapons and armour.
Expecting: Birth, Belief and Protection
Wellcome Collection | London
Opening: 24 October 2025 – Closing: 19 April 2026
A new display featuring a rare 500-year-old English parchment birth scroll shown in the UK for the first time, analysed using pioneering protein analysis that confirmed its use during pregnancy and childbirth. The 3-metre scroll contains Christian prayers and religious illustrations worn around women’s bodies for protection during childbirth. The display includes Ethiopian protective scrolls from the 18th-19th centuries and contemporary works by artists Seyni Awa Camara and Tabitha Moses exploring themes of loss, infertility and parenthood.
Beauty of the Earth: The Art of May, Jane and William Morris
The Gallery at The Arc | Winchester
Opening: 15 November 2025 – Closing: 4 February 2026
The first exhibition to show how natural beauty inspired the radical imagination and art of the Morris family. Features designs by William Morris along with work by his daughter May and wife Jane, plus artworks by other Pre-Raphaelite artists including Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Ruskin, Edward Burne-Jones and Marie Spartali Stillman. The exhibition comprises more than 50 objects including ceramics, textiles, wallpapers, prints, personal items, books and poetry, with loans from the William Morris Society, Victoria and Albert Museum, Kelmscott Manor, Ashmolean Museum and the British Library.
Henry VIII’s Lost Dagger: From the Tudor Court to the Victorian Stage
Strawberry Hill House | Twickenham
Opening: 1 November 2025 – Closing: 16 February 2026
The exhibition explores the journey of a vanished Ottoman dagger once believed to belong to Henry VIII, tracing its path from Horace Walpole’s collection at Strawberry Hill through to Victorian theatre. Two extraordinary 16th-century Ottoman daggers from Welbeck Abbey and Vienna’s Kunsthistoriqsches Museum will be displayed together for the first time, alongside reproductions of 18th-century materials from Yale University’s Lewis Walpole Library. The show examines how the dagger was acquired by Shakespearean actor Charles John Kean after Walpole’s collection was sold in 1842, and how it was used in his historically accurate theatrical productions before vanishing without trace.
Barbie: The Exhibition
Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum | Glasgow
Opening: 13 June 2026 – Closing: 18 October 2026
Created in collaboration between the Design Museum, London and Mattel, this major exhibition makes its Scottish debut. It explores the history and design of Barbie over nearly seventy years, featuring over 150 dolls including a rare 1959 first edition and over 250 objects spanning fashion, architecture, furniture and vehicle design. Highlights include the first ‘moving’ Barbie, a unique Talking Barbie prototype, best-selling Totally Hair Barbie, and a rare 1962 DreamHouse made from cardboard. The exhibition traces Barbie’s cultural impact through design evolution and includes original costumes from the 2023 ‘Barbie The Movie’ film.
Object Journeys
York Army Museum | York
Opening: 24 October 2025 – Closing: 21 February 2026
The exhibition brings together three significant medieval ewers which were made in Europe and later travelled to West Africa, eventually reaching the royal palace in Kumasi where they were looted by British soldiers in the Anglo-Asante wars of 1896 and 1900. Objects on loan include two pieces from the British Museum, including the Asante Ewer, the largest surviving bronze jug from medieval England. Additional objects from Ghana include a sword, a stool, a loom beater and a horn from the collection of The Prince of Wales’s Own Regiment of Yorkshire.
Fortitudo
Scottish Maritime Museum | Irvine
Opening: 27 September 2025 – Closing: 18 January 2025
A powerful exhibition exploring Sir Ernest Shackleton’s legendary Antarctic expedition aboard the Endurance (1914-1917) by Italian artist Paola Folicaldi Suh. The exhibition features scenes and portraits which reimagine the extraordinary survival story of Shackleton and his crew, including oil paintings on sackcloth and mixed media panels combining oil and tempera on tapestry. Each piece is accompanied by quotes from Shackleton’s memoir ‘South’ as well as recollections by Endurance captain Frank Worsley and Aeneas Mackintosh.
Funding
National Museums Liverpool has received a £1m grant to establish a new initiative designed to create an international network for researching transatlantic slavery history and legacies. The Connector project will facilitate collaboration between museums, heritage organisations, higher education institutions, creative practitioners, businesses and community groups worldwide.
£1m grant launches Connector project for transatlantic slavery research network
