The weekly feature rounds up the latest updates in museum appointments, openings, funding and new exhibitions from across the UK.
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Openings and closures
Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust has received £350,000 from the Garfield Weston Foundation and Wolfson Foundation to restore Commissioner’s House, built in 1704. The Grade I listed building is to be opened to the public after being converted into a museum and hospitality venue, expected to open doors next year. This follows a £2.3m government grant for the project.
Exhibitions
A new display at London’s Queer Britain explores Jimmy Somerville and Bronski Beat’s 1984 album ‘The Age of Consent’, featuring recently donated items including ACT-UP campaign T-shirts, a customised Levi’s jacket, handwritten lyrics for ‘Screaming’, and promotional posters for ‘Smalltown Boy’. The exhibition includes a screening of ‘Why?’ (2024), a new documentary reimagining the band’s 1984 LGBTQ+ anthem. The exhibition runs from 13 March 2025 – 25 May 2025.
Yorkshire Sculpture Park in West Yorkshire presents ‘Into Being’, a large-scale willow sculpture by Derbyshire-based artist Laura Ellen Bacon, designed specifically for the park’s 18th-century Chapel. The ambitious installation, measuring six metres into the nave and three metres up the wall, is constructed from 80 bundles of Somerset willow. it incorporates branches from fallen beech trees found on-site, creating forms reminiscent of natural cocoons and burrows that visitors can explore. The exhibition runs from 5 April 2025 – 7 September 2025.
The largest regional exhibition of its kind, the ‘Northumberland Open Exhibition’ at Woodhorn Museum showcases 379 selected artworks from 197 artists across the North East, including Robert Newton’s winning painting ‘English Pastoral’, alongside highly commended works by Nasim Akhtar, Geoffrey Bradford, Lucy Waters, and Michelle Wood. Many of the exhibited works, spanning painting, sculpture, and glassmaking, will be available for purchase, with visitors able to vote for a People’s Choice Award. The exhibition runs from 22 February 2025 – 01 June 2025.
The London Museum of Water & Steam presents ‘Tender Machines: Holding paradox’, a solo exhibition by artist-in-residence and physicist Dr Jasmine Pradissitto, curated by Richard Hore. Set amongst Victorian steam pumping engines, the exhibition features large-scale installations, sculptures and paintings incorporating watery blues and earthy tones, alongside atmospheric soundscapes created in collaboration with The London Interdisciplinary School. The exhibition runs from 3 May 2025 – 31 October 2025.
The Design Museum in London presents ‘PLATFORM: Bethan Laura Wood’, the British designer’s first UK museum solo show featuring over 70 objects including stained teacups, patterned modular furniture, wall-mounted flower lights, and a psychedelic wall sconce called HyperNature. The free exhibition is arranged in three thematic sections – Desire, Adornment and Hyperreality – each beginning with an item from Wood’s personal collection. The exhibition runs until January 2026.
Claude Monet’s masterpiece ‘The Petit Bras of the Seine at Argenteuil’ (1872) will tour to four UK venues, including the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich, South Shields Museum and Art Gallery, Grundy Art Gallery in Blackpool, and Ferens Art Gallery in Hull, as part of The National Gallery Masterpiece Tour. The painting, which depicts a serene winter scene on the outskirts of Argenteuil featuring orderly composition and varied brushstrokes characteristic of Monet’s work, has left the National Gallery only once in the past two decades. The exhibition tour will run from 2025-2027.
Funding
The government’s ‘Arts Everywhere Fund’, which totals a combined £270m, has been announced. It is to be shared between organisations it deems in most urgent need of financial support. It consists of both new and renewed funds for the sector, targeting national and civic museums.
‘Vital lifeline’: £270m package to support museums and heritage venues
