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
A new permanent gallery is to be opened at The Museum of Somerset dedicated to displaying the Chew Valley Hoard, the highest-value treasure acquisition on record. The new gallery is part of a £1m programme which also includes a community engagement programme featuring activities, exhibitions, learning opportunities and events designed to provide wider public access to the archaeological discovery.
Exhibitions
Italian, Dutch & Flemish Paintings: Highlights from Buckingham Palace
Palace of Holyroodhouse | Edinburgh
Opening: 13 November 2025 – Closing: 31 March 2026
A temporary display of 16th- and 17th-century paintings from the Royal Collection at Buckingham Palace, featuring eight of the finest works including portraits by Frans Hals, Titian and Parmigianino. The exhibition showcases masterpieces spanning 150 years, including Titian’s portrait of Jacopo Sannazaro (c.1514), Cristofano Allori’s ‘Judith with the Head of Holofernes’, and Dutch Golden Age works by Aelbert Cuyp and Pieter de Hooch. The display is housed in the 17th-century, wood-panelled exhibition space within the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh while the Picture Gallery at Buckingham Palace undergoes rehanging.
The Music is Black: A British Story
V&A East Museum | London
Opening: 18 April 2026
V&A East Museum’s first landmark exhibition reveals how Black British music has shaped British culture and its global impact, celebrating 125 years of Black music in Britain from Jazz to Reggae, 2 Tone, Drum & Bass, Trip Hop, UK Garage, Grime and beyond. The exhibition features stories of early 20th Century pioneers, international music makers and today’s groundbreaking artists from Sampha to Little Simz, Jorja Smith, and Ezra Collective. The exhibition coincides with the launch of The Music is Black Festival in collaboration with East Bank partners on Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, London.
Meeting Mohini: Koovagam through the lens of Zoya Thomas Lobo
Horniman Museum and Gardens | London
Opening: 6 December 2025
A photographic exhibition featuring 27 photographs by Zoya Thomas Lobo, India’s first transgender photojournalist, documenting the ancient Hindu festival celebrating the marriage of Hindu goddess Mohini to Aravan. The images follow transgender women, non-binary and gender non-conforming people during the Tamil month festival in Koovagam village, capturing both the wedding celebrations and funeral ceremonies, as well as life outside the festival in Mumbai. This marks Zoya Thomas Lobo’s first solo exhibition and first exhibition outside India, with all photographs becoming part of the Horniman’s permanent collection.
The Last Princesses of Punjab
Kensington Palace | London
Opening: 26 March 2026
The exhibition marks the 150th birthday of Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, Queen Victoria’s goddaughter and leading suffragette, who was an Indian princess. It explores Princess Sophia’s activism and the stories of influential women in her family, revealing lives shaped by the British Empire. The exhibition features personal letters, rare family photographs, and objects from the suffragette movement, with contemporary responses from British South Asian voices.
Mirror Moon by Luke Jerram
Royal Observatory Greenwich | Greenwich
Opening: 3 March 2026
Mirror Moon is a two-metre diameter stainless steel sculpture by multi-disciplinary British artist Luke Jerram that uses accurate topographic data from NASA to map lunar textures onto its mirrored surface. The tactile installation allows visitors to explore the Moon’s craters, valleys, mountains and lava fields, including the heavily cratered ‘far side’ of the Moon. The sculpture will be displayed in the Meridian Courtyard beside the Prime Meridian at the Royal Observatory Greenwich.
Delaine Le Bas: Un-Fair-Ground
The Whitworth | Manchester
Opening: 13 February 2026 – Closing: 31 May 2026
Delaine Le Bas transforms the Whitworth’s special exhibition galleries into an all-encompassing mixed media installation featuring paintings, sculpture, and video, drawing on the museum’s collection which will be reimagined and reframed by the artist. The exhibition unfolds in four parts, incorporating new and existing works by Le Bas across the installation, including a large-scale witch house installation featuring wallpaper design, a stage set framing a dynamic performance space, and new works in dialogue with key collection pieces by artist precursors including Madge Gill and Ana Maria Pacheco. More than 20 artworks from the Whitworth’s collection spanning 200 years will be displayed in an improvisational scenography, alongside the monumental mural ‘Un-Fair-Ground’ created for the 2024 Glastonbury Festival, exhibited for the first time in a gallery context.
Funding
National Museums Liverpool has secured £200,000 from the Public Bodies Infrastructure Fund (PBIF), a government capital investment programme, for essential conservation work on two historic waterfront vessels. The 61-year-old tugboat Brocklebank is undergoing hull repairs at Cammell Laird to address serious corrosion, with works expected to extend its seaworthiness for another decade before returning to the docks in January 2026. Meanwhile, the 72-year-old pilot boat Edmund Gardner, one of only two preserved large pilot boats worldwide and part of the National Historic Fleet, has received specialist deck and caulking treatment using traditional materials and methods by shipwrights T. Nielsen & Company. The conservation programme forms part of National Museums Liverpool’s broader Waterfront Transformation Project, with the Maritime Museum and International Slavery Museum expected to reopen in 2029.
The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust has launched an “adopt-a-beam” fundraising initiative as part of a £500,000 appeal to conserve Hall’s Croft, one of England’s most significant Jacobean buildings. The fundraising campaign follows an accident on 17 October when a driver accidentally reversed into the timber-framed house, shattering several oak beams and leaving a hole in the roadside wall.
Trust launches “adopt a beam” appeal after car crashes into Hall’s Croft
