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
Life science centre in Newcastle has appointed Dr Fozia Saleem, CEO of Magnitude Biosciences, and Dr Owen Burbidge, Newcastle City Councillor and Cabinet Member for Inclusive Economy and Skills, as new Trustees. Both bring life sciences backgrounds and will help shape the science hub’s strategic direction.
Openings & closures
Hull Maritime Museum has reopened to the public on 8 August following a £20.4m transformation of its Grade II* listed building. The museum has been closed since January 2020.
Hull Maritime Museum unveils doubled display space after six-year closure
Exhibitions
From the Landscape
Firstsite | Colchester
Opening: October 2026 – Closing: January 2027
Firstsite presents Simon Carter’s ‘From the Landscape’, the Frinton-based artist’s largest exhibition to date, bringing together paintings and drawings made since 2020 alongside an early watercolour created more than 40 years ago, plus three new series made especially for the exhibition. Carter transforms the galleries into a constructed environment, painting directly onto the walls and introducing architectural ‘groyne’ walls that echo structures along the Essex coastline, including a 19-metre wall carrying 500 monochrome painted sketches conceived as a single work. A soundscape built from recordings of the coastal Essex landscape, made during Carter’s daily walks, accompanies the installation.
Gu’un the Fish n’ That
Scottish Maritime Museum | Irvine
Opening: 16 August 2026 – Closing: 23 January 2027
The Scottish Maritime Museum presents ‘Gu’un the Fish n’ That’, a sound installation by East Anglian artist Beverley Carruthers exploring the lives of Scotland’s ‘herring girls’ who travelled from Orkney and Shetland down to East Anglia for seasonal work during the 19th and 20th century herring boom. Drawing on her own grandmother’s experience as a herring girl, Carruthers weaves together voices, songs and stories from oral history recordings capturing the memories of the last generation to work in the industry before its decline in the 1960s. The exhibition is included in museum admission.
Winston Taylor Photo Portrait Prize 2026
National Portrait Gallery | London
Opening: 5 November 2026 – Closing: 17 January 2027
The National Portrait Gallery presents the ‘Winston Taylor Photo Portrait Prize 2026’ (formerly Taylor Wessing), showing 56 works by 56 photographers selected from 3,977 entries by 1,338 photographers. Four photographers have been shortlisted: James Clifford Kent for ‘Neisser, Pinar del Río, Cuba’, Marcie Docherty for ‘PE’, Katie Hitchcock-Smith for ‘Moroccan (Amazigh) Cowboys’ and Max Pattenden for ‘Havannah, Lee Moor’. The winner, awarded £15,000, will be announced on 3 November 2026, with an £8,000 commission also going to one of the shortlisted photographers for the Gallery’s collection.
Catherine Opie: To Be Seen
National Galleries of Scotland | Edinburgh
Opening: 8 August 2026 – Closing: 1 November 2026
National Galleries of Scotland presents ‘Catherine Opie: To Be Seen’ at the Royal Scottish Academy building, the American artist’s first solo exhibition in Scotland, transferring from the National Portrait Gallery in London. Displayed across seven rooms, the exhibition brings together nearly 80 portraits spanning 35 years of Opie’s work — including her mentors and collaborators, Queer communities, children, surfers, high school footballers and political crowds, alongside self-portraits — shown with 13 paintings selected from Scotland’s national collection, among them Benedetto Gennari’s ‘Elizabeth Murray, Duchess of Lauderdale’ and Pablo Picasso’s ‘Mère et enfant’. The exhibition also forms part of the Edinburgh Art Festival, running 14–30 August. Tickets £3.50–£14, with Friends and under-18s free.
Between the Lines
London Transport Museum | London
Opening: Now open – Closing: expected end of 2026
London Transport Museum presents ‘Between the Lines’, a temporary exhibition marking 30 years of the London Underground Football League, which grew from grassroots beginnings in 1996 into a governed competition of twelve teams representing almost all of London’s Tube lines, along with the British Transport Police, the Overground and the Elizabeth line. Displays include player profiles, photos, trophies, kits and personal items, and visitors can step into a recreated team changing room. The exhibition screens a preview of a new Museum-commissioned documentary following the Jubilee line FC team through their first season in Division One, with the full film accessible via QR code. Entry is included in admission.
Van Eyck: The Portraits
National Gallery | London
Opening: 21 November 2026 – Closing: 11 April 2027
The National Gallery presents ‘Van Eyck: The Portraits’, the first-ever exhibition of the portraits of Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck, bringing together all ten of the artist’s surviving portraits from across Europe for the first time. The nine painted portraits are joined by van Eyck’s only surviving drawing, the ‘Portrait of an Elderly Man’ (about 1438, Kupferstich-Kabinett, Dresden), reunited with the painting it inspired from the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna. Further reunions include the Gallery’s own ‘Arnolfini Portrait’ (1434) shown with the Berlin ‘Portrait of a Man (Giovanni Arnolfini?)’, and the newly conserved ‘Portrait of a Man (Self Portrait?)’ (1433) alongside the portrait of the painter’s wife Margaret (1439, Musea Brugge), with several works displayed in the round for the first time to reveal the marbling on their reverses.
The Invisible Man and the Masque of Blackness
The Sherborne | Sherborne
Opening: 7 September 2026 – Closing: January 2027
The Sherborne presents ‘The Invisible Man and the Masque of Blackness’ (2016) by British Trinidadian artist Zak Ové, an installation of thirteen identical figures, each over two metres high, assembled in a new formation created specifically for the historic Georgian house’s gardens. The work explores the strength and resilience of the African diaspora, its title referring to Ralph Ellison’s novel ‘Invisible Man’ and Ben Jonson’s 1605 Jacobean court entertainment ‘The Masque of Blackness’. The exhibition is co-curated by Liz Gilmore, CEO of The Sherborne, and Sir Robert Fry, former Commandant General Royal Marines and former Chair of the Board of Trustees of The Sherborne House Trust.
Billy Connolly’s Big Wee Exhibition
Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum | Glasgow
Opening: June 2027
Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum presents ‘Billy Connolly’s Big Wee Exhibition’, the comedian’s official exhibition, covering his life, times, clothes and comedy. Tickets go on sale in early 2027.
Funding
Arts University Bournemouth has been awarded £100,000 from UKRI’s Arts and Humanities Research Council for a one-year project investigating how cleaning solvents affect plastic heritage objects at a nanoscopic level. Led by Dr Erato Kartaki, the research will develop scientific guidelines to prevent irreversible damage during conservation, working with the Museum of Design in Plastics and Netherlands-based nanotechnology specialist NanoMoi B.V.
Research to develop guidelines for cleaning heritage plastics
The National Justice Museum in Nottingham has been awarded a £249,983 grant from The National Lottery Heritage Fund to support a 24-month project, NJM: Fit For The Future, aimed at strengthening the organisation and securing the long-term future of the museum and City of Caves. The funding will create two new roles, a Head of Commercial and a Development Manager, to boost income generation and organisational capacity.
