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
Towner Eastbourne has appointed a new CEO and Director. Martin Clark, who previously worked with Towner as a member of the Turner Prize 2023 jury, joins the team after nearly a decade as director of Camden Art Centre, London.
Openings & closures
Royal Navy Museums has revealed the opening date for its Royal Marines Experience. Opening to the public on 24 October 2026, the new experience will create a national home for the story of the Royal Marines inside Portsmouth Historic Dockyard.
Exhibitions
Working at ‘The Cash’: 80 Years of NCR in Dundee
V&A Dundee | Dundee
Opening: 21 November 2026
This free exhibition explores the history of NCR’s Dundee workforce and its influence on global banking technology, from the company’s first UK factory opened in 1946 to its role in developing ATMs from the 1970s onwards. Displayed in the Michelin Design Gallery, the exhibition features photography, film and archival objects telling the stories of the people behind NCR Atleos in Dundee. It also examines the shift from physical cash to digital banking and the future of financial services.
Gulnur Mukazhanova: The Manifold of Memory
The Whitworth | Manchester
Opening: 19 November 2026 – Closing: 27 May 2027
The Whitworth presents ‘The Manifold of Memory’, a Bagri Commission by Berlin-based Kazakh artist Gulnur Mukazhanova, developed through research into the gallery’s textile collection spanning early Egyptian fabrics to nineteenth-century industrial textiles. The monumental installation, made from felt, silk and vintage fabrics, stretches approximately 16 metres across the gallery wall and rises five metres high, growing from a single textile fragment inspired by the collection. A selection of historic textiles from the Whitworth’s collection is shown alongside the installation, revealing the sources that inspired the project.
Sacred Treasures from Kyiv
V&A South Kensington | London
Opening: 14 September 2026 – Closing: 17 September 2027
The V&A presents ‘Sacred Treasures from Kyiv’, a free display of seven eighteenth-century sacred objects on loan from Ukraine’s National Preserve ‘Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra’, shown in the UK for the first time. The objects, key items of worship in the Ukrainian Orthodox church, include an icon, a silver-bound altar Gospel, a diskos used to carry the Eucharist in Orthodox liturgy, and a silver-gilded chalice depicting the crucifixion. Marking the 975th anniversary of the founding of the Lavra monastery, the display builds on a multi-year partnership between the V&A and the National Preserve centred on provenance research into silver-gilt Holy Gates in the Gilbert Collection.
William Dobson: Self-Portrait
Ferens Art Gallery | Hull
Opening: 31 January 2027 – Closing: 23 May 2027
Tate and the National Portrait Gallery present a UK tour of William Dobson’s ‘Self-Portrait’ (c.1635-40), one of the earliest examples of English self-portraiture, jointly acquired by the two institutions in 2025. At the Ferens Art Gallery it forms a focal point of ‘Art Uprising!’, an exhibition marking the gallery’s centenary year and exploring the region’s history of rebellion and creativity, with young people from The Warren Youth Project co-producing a soundscape responding to Hull’s role in the build-up to the First English Civil War. The portrait continues on tour to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford (June–December 2027) before returning to the National Portrait Gallery in London (January–July 2028).
Angela Harding: A Chronicle of Birds and Beasts
Yorkshire Sculpture Park | Wakefield
Opening: 14 November 2026 – Closing: 28 February 2027
Yorkshire Sculpture Park presents ‘A Chronicle of Birds and Beasts’, printmaker, illustrator and author Angela Harding’s first exhibition at YSP in ten years, featuring new linocuts, screenprints, oil and acrylic paintings and painted wooden birds. The show centres on a tetraptych of large prints — ‘Entrapped Eagle Waking Fox’, ‘Curlews and Hoopoe’ and ‘White Hart and Crown’ — printed by Selby-based master printmaker Dan Bugg, alongside works created for The Wilding Project with Isabella Tree and Blossomise with Simon Armitage, who provides accompanying words. The Visitor Centre features hand-painted and stencilled wooden birds suspended overhead, while the concourse windows carry vinyls and hand-embellished scenes with a poem by Armitage.
Funding
The Royal Institution of Cornwall, the charity which runs Cornwall Museum and Art Gallery, has awarded its 2026 Dr Jayne Wackett Memorial Fund Grant to Falmouth University PhD researcher Vicki Aimers for ‘Letters from the Sea’, a public engagement project inspired by a 19th-century sampler held at the museum. The project will run journaling and textile workshops at the National Maritime Museum Cornwall, exploring themes of connection, loss and resilience through the story of Margaret Lanyon.
