The weekly feature rounds up the latest updates in museum appointments, openings, funding and new exhibitions from across the UK.
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Appointments
Susan Deighan, former CEO of Glasgow Life, and Ray Macfarlane MBE, former chair of Museums Galleries Scotland, have been appointed as interim members of the Historic Environment Scotland board for a one-year term beginning 10 November 2025. Deighan brings over three decades of public sector leadership in culture and events, while Macfarlane contributes extensive heritage governance experience including former roles with the National Lottery Heritage Fund and National Galleries of Scotland.
Barbara Woroncow has been reappointed as a Trustee of the Royal Armouries for a four-year term beginning January 2026. The museum professional, who was awarded an OBE in 2000 for services to museums and formerly served as Chief Executive of Yorkshire Museums Council, currently chairs the Royal Armouries’ Collections, Research and Learning Committee.
Openings & closures
The Museum of Youth Culture in Camden has pushed back its planned opening next month, after a leak in its basement venue. The museum was set to open in December 2025 at St. Pancras Campus in Camden. The 6,500 square foot venue has three gallery spaces.
Exhibitions
Call to Art: William Morris & the Pre-Raphaelites
The Fitzwilliam Museum | Cambridge
Opening: 23 October 2026 – Closing: 3 May 2027
This major exhibition re-examines William Morris and his circle, including artists and designers Kate Faulkner, May Morris, Edward Burne-Jones, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Elizabeth Siddal, and their radical quest to change society through art. The exhibition features a wide selection of well-known and rarely seen paintings, designs, and art objects from the Fitzwilliam’s collection, along with key loans from major UK institutions. Highlights include a focus on women artists and designers, particularly Faulkner and Siddal, revealing through new research how their work showed other women pathways into the field.
Catharina van Hemessen
The National Gallery | London
Opening: 4 March 2027 – Closing: 30 May 2027
The first exhibition in the UK dedicated to Catharina van Hemessen (1527/28 – after 1565), one of Europe’s earliest women painters. The exhibition aims to bring together most of the signed paintings of this Flemish Renaissance artist from international collections. Van Hemessen is known for her small-scale portraits of women completed between the late 1540s and early 1550s, and is the earliest woman artist in the National Gallery’s collection in London.
People Watching
Dorset Museum & Art Gallery | Dorset
Opening: 31 January 2026 – Closing: 10 May 2026
The exhibition features approximately 50 works of sculpture, paintings, drawings and photography from The Ingram Collection and Dorset Museum & Art Gallery, spanning more than a century from 1915 to today. Notable works include Bridget Riley’s ‘Woman at Tea-table’ from the 1950s, Dod Procter’s ‘The Golden Girl’ (circa 1930), and Edward Burra’s watercolour ‘Seamen Ashore, Greenock’ (circa 1944). The display includes works by over 40 individual artists, many of which have never been publicly displayed before, exploring how portraiture developed through the 20th and 21st centuries.
Brilli-ANT!
Hopetown Darlington | Darlington
Opening: 17 January 2026 – Closing: 10 March 2026
An interactive, family-friendly climate adventure inspired by Aesop’s fable ‘The Ant and the Grasshopper’, designed for children aged 1 to 10 and their families. Visitors explore a sculpted anthill made from recycled materials, meeting creatures like a dung beetle with recycling tips and a community-minded bumblebee. The exhibition takes place inside the Exhibition Hall and combines hands-on activities, creative play, and positive climate ideas through storytelling and imagination.
Marshmallow Laser Feast: Of the Oak
Yorkshire Sculpture Park | Wakefield
Opening: 6 December 2025 – Closing: 15 March 2026
An immersive video and sound installation revealing the inner workings and interconnectivity of an oak tree and its surroundings through cutting-edge digital art. Using LiDAR scanning, ground-penetrating radar, CT-scanned soil samples, and thousands of photographs, the collective created a ‘digital double’ of Kew Gardens’ Lucombe Oak. The installation features a large-scale video accompanied by surround-sound audio recorded over 24 hours by arborists at Wakehurst, and includes guided meditations written by nature writers and scientists including author Merlin Sheldrake.
Taylor Wessing Photo Portrait Prize 2025
National Portrait Gallery | London
Opening: 13 November 2025 – Closing: 8 February 2026
The exhibition presents the prize-winning portraits from the Taylor Wessing Photo Portrait Prize 2025, including Martina Holmberg’s first-place portrait ‘Mel’ from her series ‘The Outside of the Inside’, documenting people with facial and physical differences. Second prize winner Luan Davide Gray’s ‘We Dare to Hug’ captures intimate connection between two men in their 60s, whilst third prize winner Byron Mohammad Hamzah’s ‘Jaidi Playing’ documents stateless youth in Semporna, Malaysia. Hollie Fernando’s Taylor Wessing Photographic Commission winner ‘Boss Morris’ explores gender equality in Morris dancing, and a newly unveiled portrait of activist Lady Phyll by 2024 commission winner Jesse Navarre Vos is also displayed.
Delcy Morelos outdoor commission
Barbican | London
Opening: 15 May 2026 – Closing: 31 July 2026
Colombian artist Delcy Morelos presents her first UK public commission and most ambitious outdoor work to date in the Barbican’s Sculpture Court in London. The site-specific installation features an ovular pavilion made of clay, soil, fragrant spices and plant materials, spanning roughly 24 metres in circumference. Visitors can enter and circulate the artwork, experiencing its shifting light and fragrant smells whilst resting within its inner courtyard.
