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 Prime Minister has reappointed Alison Taylor as a Trustee of The Wallace Collection for a four-year term commencing 1 December 2025. Taylor, who has served as a trustee since November 2021 and currently holds the roles of Deputy Chair and Chair of the Audit, Risk and Assurance Committee, is CEO of CAF Bank and Charities Aid Foundation Financial Services. She also serves as a trustee of Shelter and brings extensive financial services expertise to the Collection’s board.
Birmingham Museums Trust has appointed Stephen Hughes as the new chair of its board of trustees, taking up the post in February 2026. Hughes, who served as chief executive of Birmingham City Council from 2005 to 2014, brings extensive public service and governance experience, having held senior non-executive roles including chair of Housing 21 and non-executive director at HS2 Ltd. He succeeds Niels de Vos, who has completed six years as chair, with the trust also announcing Jane Richardson (CEO of National Museums Wales) as a new trustee and Tony Simpson (Oliver Wyman partner) as vice chairman.
Openings & closures
Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet will close for winter on 3 November for the final Embrace Abbeydale improvements, funded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund. These include a new play area, refurbished cottages, industrial soundscapes, and a reopening celebration. Sheffield City Council will also repair the dam in spring 2026.
Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery has reopened four refurbished galleries showcasing over 60 Pre-Raphaelite works, including pieces by Ford Madox Brown and Edward Burne-Jones. The galleries, free to visitors, also provide access to the Staffordshire Hoard.
Poole Museum will reopen on 5 November following a seven-year, £10 million heritage-led regeneration project that has conserved and restored three historic listed buildings whilst more than doubling public space without new construction.
Exhibitions
Dimensions: Contemporary Chinese Studio Crafts
V&A South Kensington | London
Opening: 28 October 2025 – Closing: 27 September 2026
The UK’s first major display exploring contemporary studio crafts in China, showcasing over 80 objects including nearly 50 new acquisitions. The exhibition features contemporary and modern makers who reimagine traditional practices across ceramics, lacquerware, and metalwork, with works displayed in dialogue alongside historic Chinese craftsmanship. Highlights include LOEWE FOUNDATION Craft Prize winner Lin Fanglu’s ‘She’s Bestowed Love’ (2025) and Zhang Huimin’s ‘Golden Mammary 4’ (2025), located in the China Gallery and Ceramics Gallery at the London museum.
Delaine Le Bas
The Whitworth | Manchester
Opening: 13 February 2026 – Closing: 31 May 2026
A major solo exhibition by Delaine Le Bas following her 2024 Turner Prize nomination. The exhibition features new and recent works including ‘Un-Fair-Ground’, her monumental freestanding mural created for the 2024 Glastonbury Festival. The show includes a new installation exploring magic, folklore and witchcraft, alongside works by artist peers and predecessors including Pearl Alcock, William Blake, Madge Gill, John Martin and Paula Rego.
Waldmüller: Landscapes
National Gallery | London
Opening: 2 July 2026 – Closing: 20 September 2026
The first UK exhibition of Austrian 19th-century artist Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller’s landscape paintings, featuring about 14 works mostly from the Belvedere Museum collection. The exhibition spans his career from early Prater park studies through Alpine Salzkammergut scenes to Sicilian views and later works influenced by Italian light. Display includes ‘Early Spring in the Vienna Woods’ (1861) and works depicting trees, lakes, mountains and Classical ruins rendered with photographic clarity and intense colour.
Triceratops: Eat, Roam, Repeat
Manchester Museum | Manchester
Opening: 25 October 2025 – Closing: 22 February 2026
The exhibition centres around a rare fossilised Triceratops skull, offering visitors a close encounter with the three-horned dinosaur. The display explores how Triceratops lived, what it ate, and how it survived battles with predators like T. rex through examination of its anatomy including horns, frill, beak and teeth. Interactive elements include a digital touch replica of the skull and a fossil dig activity where families can uncover replicas.
Underground worlds – caves of the Yorkshire Dales and Vietnam
Dales Countryside Museum | Hawes
Opening: 28 October 2025 – Closing: 4 January 2026
This exhibition showcases how the Yorkshire Dales National Park and Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park in Vietnam both feature large limestone areas and some of the world’s largest cave systems. The display features photography and video footage of cavers and caving systems in both locations, celebrating 35 years of exploration and exchange between British and Vietnamese cavers. The exhibition was opened by Derek Twine, Chair of the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority, in Hawes.
A Story of South Asian Art: Mrinalini Mukherjee and Her Circle
Royal Academy of Arts | London
Opening: 31 October 2025 – Closing: 24 February 2026
This exhibition traces a century of South Asian art from the 1930s to the present day through the people and places that influenced Indian sculptor Mrinalini Mukherjee (1949-2015). Her artworks fuse abstraction with the human form, drawing on nature, regional traditions of architecture and craft, and international Modernist art and design. The exhibition features work by her parents Leela Mukherjee and Benode Behari Mukherjee who taught at Kala Bhavana in Santiniketan, alongside key figures including KG Subramanyan, Jagdish Swaminathan, Nilima Sheikh and Gulammohammed Sheikh. Works on view range from monumental woven sculptures to intricate paintings, ceramics, collages and drawings.
Funding
Historic England has awarded a £103,000 grant to Newstead Abbey in Nottinghamshire for essential roofing and stonework repairs. The funding will also support project development work, including feasibility studies to inform future funding bids.
Newstead Abbey receives £103,000 Historic England grant for conservation repairs
