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
Thackray Museum of Medicine has appointed a new chair. Neil Clephan OBE, former head of Roundhay School, will take up the role from November 2026.
The Fitzrovia Chapel has appointed curator and writer George Vasey as its Curator in Residence for 2027, where he will oversee three new commissions by Christian Ovonlen, Eileen Cooper OBE RA and Aliaskar Abarkas, staged across the chapel in January, April and November respectively. The programme, exploring themes of catharsis, transformation and recuperation, is supported by Intoart, University College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Teesside University.
Georgia Butters has taken a role as the new permanent head of Stonehenge, having served in the interim role at English Heritage since earlier this year. Butters takes up the role after a decade-long career at the organisation, most recently as project lead for Cornwall, having previously worked at the Fenland Archaeological Trust, Royal Cornwall Museum and the Welsh National Opera.
Openings & closures
A new free-to-visit gallery is set to the public at the Natural History Museum for the first time in 80 years. The ‘Nature and Us’ gallery on the second floor of the museum’s Waterhouse building was closed to the public over 80 years ago.
First look inside Natural History Museum gallery reopening after 80 years
Exhibitions
Tove Jansson and her Families
Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration | London
Opening: 21 November 2026 – Closing: 9 May 2027
The Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration presents ‘Tove Jansson and her Families’, the UK’s first exhibition to focus on the Finnish author-illustrator’s work as an illustrator and the people who shaped her life, and the first to show her original works in almost a decade. On display are previously unseen drawings and over 100 rarely-seen sketches, paintings, illustrations and photographs, including Tove’s childhood handmade book ‘Prinsessan Glittergull’ (1922), original art from ‘The Moomins and the Great Flood’ (1945) and a charcoal study for the ‘Bird Blue’ (1953) mural.
Peter Blake: Pop Art Life
National Portrait Gallery | London
Opening: 11 February 2027 – Closing: 23 May 2027
The National Portrait Gallery has announced its 2027 exhibition programme. It begins with’Peter Blake: Pop Art Life’, the first major institutional show dedicated to Blake’s portraits, curated in close collaboration with the artist, now 94. Bringing together portraits made over eight decades, it includes works completed on found objects such as a military locker, a door and an album cover, alongside realist portraits of friends from music, fashion and art, and shrines to icons such as Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe.
Monet: Painting Time
Tate Modern | London
Opening: 25 February 2027 – Closing: 27 June 2027
Tate Modern presents ‘Monet: Painting Time’, its first exhibition devoted to Claude Monet, staged 100 years after his death and the UK’s largest presentation of his work in nearly a decade. Featuring more than 60 paintings spanning the 1870s to the 1920s, it traces his exploration of the passing of time — bringing together works from his ‘Grainstacks’, ‘Rouen Cathedral’ and ‘Poplars’ series, winter scenes of the Seine, and 20 works from the ‘Water Lilies’ cycle, closing with Ange Leccia’s immersive video work ‘(D) Après Monet’ (2020).
How We Lost America
Hogarth’s House | London
Opening: 22 September 2026 – Closing: 1 November 2026
Hogarth’s House presents ‘How We Lost America’, marking the 250th anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence with a fresh look at the dawn of American independence through a British lens, highlighting overlooked stories of Black enslaved soldiers and women. It tells the stories of poet Phillis Wheatley, the first African American to publish a book of poetry, of Peter and John King who worked for Benjamin Franklin, and of Black Loyalists who sought freedom through the Revolution. The exhibition then tours to Boston Manor House, Brentford (November–December 2026), Surrey History Centre, Woking (January 2027) and Bull House, Lewes (February 2027).
Funding
Oxford’s The Story Museum has received £225,000 from The Julia Rausing Trust to support its Learning Programme over the next three years, funding school visits, creative workshops and storytelling sessions that use stories as a gateway to literacy, creativity, confidence and wellbeing.
