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
Lesley Exley, a CEO and Trustee with experience in retail and the arts, has been appointed to the Fashion Museum Bath Foundation. Exley will bring expertise in brand strategy and fundraising. The Foundation, established in 2024, is dedicated to supporting the new museum’s establishment and long-term sustainability.
Openings & closures
Advisor’s round-up of everything happening in 2026, including the year’s major openings, is now published.
Exhibitions
The Architecture Drawing Prize Exhibition
Sir John Soane’s Museum | London
Opening: 28 January 2026 – Closing: 15 February 2026
The exhibition showcases winners and commended entries from the 8th edition of The Architecture Drawing Prize, a partnership between Make Architects, World Architecture Festival and Sir John Soane’s Museum. The displayed works include drawings created in various media from pencil and ink to digital programmes, featuring projects such as an integrated memorial to the Morecambe Bay cockling disaster, suspended structures between mountains, mapping of urban drift, a re-imagined Venetian cityscape, and various architectural designs addressing climate change and social issues. The works span all forms of architectural designs from conceptual to technical, created by architects, designers and students from the UK, China, USA, Brazil and the Netherlands.
Gwen John: Strange Beauties
National Museum Cardiff | Cardiff
Opening: 7 February 2026 – Closing: 28 June 2026
This comprehensive retrospective marks the 150th anniversary of Gwen John’s birth and is the most extensive exhibition of the Welsh artist’s work in 40 years. More than 200 paintings, drawings, watercolours, sketchbooks, letters, and archival material will be displayed, including rarely seen works on paper from the artist’s studio collection and loans from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, and Tate. The exhibition features works ranging from delicate landscape sketches to impromptu figure studies and vibrantly coloured still lifes, offering new insights into John’s experimental approach to composition and her distinctive working methods.
I photograph comedians! Photography by Andy Hollingworth
Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery | Birmingham
Opening: 18 February 2026 – Closing: 31 May 2026
A retrospective exhibition by British photographer Andy Hollingworth featuring nearly 80 images of studio portraits, off-stage moments and live stage performances of UK comedy legends. The exhibition includes photographs of iconic objects such as Eric Morecambe’s pipe, Tommy Cooper’s fez and Billy Connolly’s banana boots, alongside comedy memorabilia including a tour jacket worn by Lenny Henry on his 1984 tour, a signed pair of Rik Mayall’s underpants and Joe Lycett’s teddy suit. Featured comedians include Ken Dodd, Sean Lock, Rik Mayall, Victoria Wood, Maisie Adam, Rhod Gilbert, Rosie Jones, Sarah Millican, and Birmingham-based comedians Jasper Carrott and Stewart Lee.
Turner in January
National Galleries of Scotland | Edinburgh
Opening: 1 January 2026 – Closing: 31 January 2026
Features 38 watercolours by Joseph Mallord William Turner from Scotland’s collection, part of the Henry Vaughan Bequest from 1900. The exhibition showcases atmospheric early drawings, experimental colour studies, studies for prints and book illustrations, and exhibition pieces including scenes of the Himalayas, Venice, the Swiss Alps, Loch Coruisk on the Isle of Skye, and Melrose in the Scottish Borders. Also features the watercolour ‘Virginia Water’ (about 1829) on long-term loan, displayed for the first time since 2020.
Handle with Care: Cornelia Parker & Historic Glass
No.1 Royal Crescent | Bath
Opening: 7 February 2026 – Closing: 10 May 2026
The exhibition at No.1 Royal Crescent in Bath juxtaposes Cornelia Parker’s photogravure series ‘One Day This Glass Will Break’ (2015), ‘Thirty Pieces of Silver (exposed)’ (2015), ‘Fox Talbot’s Articles of Glass’ (2017) and ‘Through a Glass Darkly’ (2020) with Georgian historic glass. Parker’s work employs a hybrid technique inspired by William Henry Fox Talbot’s photogravure method, placing actual glassware onto light-sensitive etching plates to capture shadows when exposed to ultraviolet light. The show displays photogravure etchings depicting original glassware owned by Fox Talbot, who lived in Lacock, Wiltshire, alongside rare examples of historic Georgian glass from the collections of No.1 Royal Crescent, The Victoria Art Gallery and the Holburne Museum.
In Bloom: How Plants Changed Our World
Ashmolean Museum | Oxford
Opening: 19 March 2026 – Closing: 16 August 2026
This exhibition traces the journeys of Britain’s most familiar blooms through over 100 artworks including botanical paintings, drawings, historical curiosities and contemporary works. Featured artists include Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Rachel Ruysch, Maria Sibylla Merian, Georg Dionysius Ehret, Ferdinand Bauer, Rory McEwen, and contemporary artists Anahita Norouzi, Kate Friend, and others. The exhibition explores how plants were acquired, classified and circulated from the seventeenth century onwards, examining the networks of empire that brought tulips, roses, orchids and camellias to Britain, and includes significant objects such as nineteenth-century papier-mâché botanical models and a Wardian Case from c.1870.
Winter Past
Museum of the Home | London
Opening: 18 November 2025 – Closing: 11 January 2026
Winter Past explores how seasonal festivals and personal traditions shape the ways people spend time at home during winter months through a reimagining of the renowned Rooms Through Time. The exhibition takes visitors on a seasonal journey through centuries of home, warmth, and celebration, featuring period rooms from 1630 to 2049. The annual exhibition is curated in collaboration with the Museum’s Community Authors and is located at the Museum of the Home in London.
Funding
The Insurance Museum has been awarded a £249,700 grant from The National Lottery Heritage Fund for the Insurance Heritage at Risk project. The project will research insurance heritage and develop educational programmes for schools and families.
