The weekly feature rounds up the latest updates in museum appointments, openings, funding and new exhibitions from across the UK.
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Museum Moves
Appointments
The National Gallery in London has appointed Patrick Elliott as its first curator of modern paintings. Dr Elliott joins the National Gallery after 36 years at the National Galleries of Scotland (NGS) in Edinburgh, where he has worked as chief curator of modern and contemporary art.
The curator of modern paintings is a new position created as part of the Gallery’s recently announced Project Domani, which includes the Gallery’s move to extend its historic collection beyond 1900.
Openings and closures
The Courtauld has announced the creation of two new galleries dedicated to contemporary art, expected to open in 2029 as part of the development of its new campus at Somerset House.
Exhibitions
A View of One’s Own: Landscapes by British Women Artists 1760-1860
The Courtauld Gallery | London
Opening: 28 January 2026 – Closing: 20 May 2026
The Courtauld Gallery in London presents landscape drawings and watercolours by women artists working in Britain between 1760 and 1860. The exhibition features 10 artists including Harriet Lister and Lady Mary Lowther, who were among the first to depict the Lake District; Amelia Long, Lady Farnborough, one of the first British artists to travel to France following the Napoleonic Wars; and Elizabeth Batty, whose works were only rediscovered a few years ago. Twenty-four works on paper are on display, including recent acquisitions and promised gifts, with works by Fanny Blake such as ‘A Rainbow over Patterdale Churchyard, Cumbria’ (1849).
Wow! Amazing Science in Children’s Books
Royal Albert Memorial Museum & Art Gallery (RAMM) | Exeter
Opening: 31 January 2026 – Closing: 26 April 2026
This exhibition explores science through children’s book illustrations, featuring work by Oliver Jeffers, Colin King, Yuval Zommer and others. The exhibition is organised into six sections covering the history of science, the solar system, the natural world, the human body and food, machines and mechanics, and imagined futures. It highlights the contributions of historic scientists including Galileo, Leonardo da Vinci, Ada Lovelace and Wangari Maathai, and features illustrations from books including ‘The History of Information’ by Chris Haughton and ‘My Brilliant Brain’ illustrated by Viola Wang.
Raise a Glass: From Everyday Sips to Special Toasts
Stourbridge Glass Museum | Stourbridge
Opening: 29 January 2025
The exhibition explores the evolution of drinking vessels across centuries, tracing changing tastes, technologies and traditions. On display are 17th- and 18th-century rummers, champagne coupes, tulip-shaped champagne glasses, the ‘nonic’ pint glass, cocktail designs from the 1920s and 1930s, and wine glasses ranging from Venetian Cristallo to Georgian and Victorian examples. The exhibition examines how pressed glass in the 19th century made decorative glassware affordable and explores the anatomy of glassware through its bowl, stem and foot.
Robert Ryman: The Real Thing
Barbican Art Gallery | London
Opening: 8 October 2026 – Closing: 28 February 2027
The first UK exhibition in over 30 years to examine Robert Ryman’s work in depth, featuring over 60 works from the mid-1950s to the early 2010s. The exhibition explores Ryman’s investigation of painting’s fundamental elements: paint, surface, and relationship to wall and space. Works span various materials including canvas, linen, fibreglass, steel, aluminium, Plexiglas, tracing paper, and coffee filter paper, using oil, acrylic, enamel, and epoxy paints. Featured works include ‘Untitled’ (1958), ‘Untitled (Background Music)’ (ca. 1962), ‘Surface Veil II’ (ca. 1970), ‘Pair Navigation’ (1984 and 2002), and works from ‘Series (White)’ (2003-2005). The exhibition examines Ryman’s early training as a jazz saxophonist, his studio process, his use of signatures and custom-made fixings as compositional elements, and his relationship to drawing.
William Blake: The Age of Romantic Fantasy
National Gallery of Ireland | Dublin
Opening: 16 April 2026 – Closing: 19 July 2026
The National Gallery of Ireland presents over 100 works from Tate’s collection exploring late 18th and early 19th century fascination with the supernatural, fantasy and the gothic. Blake’s iconic images are displayed alongside works by his contemporaries including Francis Danby, J.M.W. Turner, George Romney and Henry Fuseli. Featured works include Blake’s large colour prints ‘The House of Death’ (1795-1805), ‘The Night of Enitharmon’s Joy’ (1795), ‘Satan Exulting over Eve’ (1795), the small-scale ‘The Ghost of a Flea’ (1819-1820), and his final watercolours illustrating Dante’s ‘The Divine Comedy’.
The Wallace Collection at War
The Wallace Collection | London
Opening: 15 April 2026 – Closing: 25 October 2026
This free display at the Wallace Collection in London examines how Hertford House was repurposed during the Second World War after its artworks were evacuated. Drawing on archival material, wartime records and original artworks, the exhibition focuses on two 1942 exhibitions held at the empty museum: ‘Artists Aid Russia’ (which brought together 904 works by living artists including Augustus John, Jacob Epstein, Carel Weight, Charles Murray, Ethel Gabain and Arthur Shearsby to raise funds for the Red Cross Aid to Russia Fund) and ‘Twenty-Five Years of Progress’ (a Soviet-style agitprop installation designed by Ernö Goldfinger). The display includes photographs of the Blitz, the collection in storage, and works from the 1942 exhibitions alongside posters and catalogues by Henri Kay Henrion.
LR Vandy: Rise
Yorkshire Sculpture Park | Wakefield
Opening: 14 March 2026 – Closing: 13 September 2026
LR Vandy presents a major new body of work examining resilience, collective movement, and the material legacies of trade and labour through large-scale rope installations, figurative sculpture and wall-based works. The exhibition centres on ‘A Call to Dance’, a monumental rope maypole created onsite at Yorkshire Sculpture Park in The Weston Gallery, alongside the outdoor sculptural work ‘Dancing in Time: The Ties That Bind Us’, a five-metre-high rope structure crowned with willow. Working from her studio at the Historic Dockyard in Chatham, Kent, Vandy uses rope as both a physical medium and carrier of historical meaning, incorporating found and repurposed materials to explore transformation and the systems embedded within everyday objects.
The Great Dinosaur Escape
Life Science Centre | Newcastle
Opening: 28 March 2025 – Closing: 30 September 2025
The Great Dinosaur Escape features over 20 ultra-realistic, full-scale animatronic dinosaurs, including a three tonne, 9 metre long roaring T.rex, alongside additional static dinosaurs, fossil displays and interactive learning elements. The collection, developed in Mexico by Dinosaurios Mexico, makes its first UK appearance at the Newcastle venue. Visitors become Dino Rangers and follow a trail to crack the code that will secure the dinosaur enclosure, with dinosaur-themed live shows, hands-on making activities, experiments and curriculum-linked workshops also available.
Funding
Ulster Folk Museum has received a £50m investment to support delivery of the Reawakening project, which aims to improve facilities, enhance access to collections and strengthen the museum’s role in connecting people with their heritage.
£50m investment confirmed for Ulster Folk Museum transformation
