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
The Bluecoat, England’s oldest arts centre, has appointed its first creative director. Emer Grant, currently artistic director and CEO of Arts Collective Northampton, will join the Liverpool centre in early 2027 as the Bluecoat marks its centenary year.
Bluecoat, England’s oldest arts centre, appoints first creative director
Openings and closures
A 2028 date has been set for the new home of The Beatles Story museum in Liverpool. The move will quadruple the space available and will include sets from the upcoming Beatles biopic film series, says Apple Corps, which is to run the museum from next year.
‘Just like Graceland or Dollywood’: The Beatles Story to expand in new home
Exhibitions
Collected
National Gallery | London
Opening: 22 May 2027 – Closing: 5 September 2027
The National Gallery presents ‘Collected’, the first exhibition of objects and works of art acquired for the nation through the Acceptance in Lieu and Cultural Gifts schemes, delivered by Arts Council England. Showing around forty works, it includes Pablo Picasso’s ‘The Weeping Woman’ (1937), Lucian Freud’s ‘Portrait of Hermione Scott’ (1960), René Magritte’s ‘La condition humaine’ (1935), Peter Doig’s ‘At the Edge of Town’ (1986–88) and the Byzantine Hamilton-Rothschild Tazza. The exhibition then tours to the National Galleries of Scotland, the Ulster Museum in Belfast and Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales.
Besieged: Sieges of the Civil War
The Cromwell Museum | Huntingdon
Opening: 3 November 2026 – Closing: 4 April 2027
The Cromwell Museum presents ‘Besieged: Sieges of the Civil War’, a free exhibition revealing how the English Civil Wars were dominated by sieges, with 189 places besieged between 1642 and 1648 against 28 major battles. It explains how earthwork defences were built and how siege tactics evolved, through case studies of Oxford, Bristol, Leicester, Skipton Castle and Hull, with original artefacts including siege plans of Newark, Plymouth and Colchester, musket balls, a cannon ball from Sheffield Castle and the only surviving Civil War siege helmet in the UK.
Powering the Post
The Postal Museum | London
Opening: 29 May 2027
The Postal Museum presents ‘Powering the Post’, a temporary exhibition marking 100 years of Mail Rail, the world’s first driverless electric railway, which opened beneath London’s streets in 1927 and carried four million letters a day at its peak. Inspired by the people who designed, built and maintained the network, the exhibition explores postal engineering and experimentation, including a failed attempt to deliver letters by missile, and is co-produced with postal workers and residents local to Mail Rail’s Mount Pleasant station.
Vanessa Bell & Duncan Grant: Inside Bloomsbury
Tate Britain | London
Opening: 12 November 2026 – Closing: 11 April 2027
Tate Britain presents ‘Vanessa Bell & Duncan Grant: Inside Bloomsbury’, the first major exhibition to chart the five-decade creative partnership between the two Bloomsbury Group artists. Featuring over 300 works, it brings together furniture, ceramics and textiles adorned with their modernist designs, alongside a restaging of the artists’ studio relocated to Tate Britain from Charleston.
Steve McQueen: Resistance – How Protest Shaped Britain and Photography Shaped Protest
Leeds Art Gallery | Leeds
Opening: 6 November 2026 – Closing: 25 April 2027
Leeds Art Gallery presents ‘Steve McQueen: Resistance’, conceived by the artist and filmmaker, exploring how a century of resistance has shaped Britain and the role photography played in documenting it, from the suffragettes of 1903 to the 2003 march against the Iraq War. Bringing together work by over 40 photographers, Leeds is the North of England venue on the tour, following presentations in Margate and Edinburgh.
Profiad Kyffin Experience
National Library of Wales | Aberystwyth
Opening: 18 November 2026
The National Library of Wales presents the ‘Profiad Kyffin Experience’, a free, 30-minute immersive experience fusing visual technology, interactive storytelling and original works from the archive of Sir Kyffin Williams (1918–2006), widely regarded as the defining Welsh artist of the 20th century. Developed by creative partners Focal Studios and Leo & Hyde, the bilingual experience digitally maps, reconstructs and projects Williams’s paintings of Welsh mountains, hill-farms and sheepdogs around visitors in art, sound and light. The National Library holds the largest collection of his work in the world.
Glenn Brown: Anatomy of Trees
Gainsborough’s House | Sudbury
Opening: 8 November 2026 – Closing: 18 April 2027
Gainsborough’s House presents ‘Glenn Brown: Anatomy of Trees’, the largest UK museum display of work by Glenn Brown CBE in more than a decade, featuring paintings and drawings made over the last ten years. Inspired by Suffolk’s ancient woodlands, the works are displayed throughout both the gallery and the historic house.
Funding
Scala Worcester has been awarded £104,158 by The National Lottery Heritage Fund for Reel Memories, a project running from October 2026 to May 2028 that will collect memories, memorabilia and documentation of Scala’s years as a cinema from 1922 to 1973. Working with partners including Worcestershire Archives Service, the University of Worcester and local schools, the venue will appoint a project manager and an outreach and education co-ordinator to deliver oral history, archival research and film projects, culminating in an immersive showcase event in 2028 ahead of the arts centre’s opening in Angel Place in 2027.
