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
The National Football Museum has appointed three new members to its Board of Trustees and one member to its Trading Company Board. The new trustees are Leigh Gell, lead for women and girls football at Manchester FA, Karan Rai, EDI Insights & Research Manager at Leeds Beckett University/PGMOL, and Steve Wilson, Group Chief Finance Officer at Greater Manchester Combined Authority, while Simon Anderson, a restaurateur and entrepreneur, joins the Trading Company Board. The appointments will support the museum’s Football Creates strategy with the new members bringing expertise in football development, research, finance, and hospitality.
The Weald & Downland Living Museum in Chichester has appointed a new interim director, following the departure of Tilly Blythe, who has taken up a new role at the Imperial War Museum. Clare de Bathe brings to the interim role 25 years of experience in the voluntary, community, and education sectors. She has been chief executive of the Chichester Community Development Trust (CCDT) for the last 12 years.
The City of London Corporation has appointed Abigail Pogson as the new chief executive of the Barbican Centre, following what it called a “competitive international recruitment process”. Pogson, currently chief executive of The Glasshouse International Centre for Music, will take up the role on 5 January 2026.
Barbican Centre appoints new CEO as £191m renewal programme advances
Openings & closures
The New Schroder Gallery opens to the public on September 10, 2025, at the Holburne Museum in Bath, displaying over 100 pieces of Renaissance silverware, paintings, bronzes, maiolica and gems from the Schroder family collection. The new lower ground floor gallery features masterpieces including a large ornate silver ship, a rare mechanical celestial globe, and works by Lucas Cranach the Elder and Hans Holbein the Elder, with admission included in general tickets.
A new museum is to open in Somerset next month, timed to coincide with the bicentenary of footwear company Clarks. The Shoemakers Museum will be opened by The Alfred Gillett Trust, the charity which preserves the heritage collections of C & J Clark Ltd., the family which founded the global shoemaking company.
Exhibitions
London Transport Museum presents ‘Art deco: the golden age of poster design’, featuring over one hundred original posters and artworks from Edward McKnight Kauffer, Dora Batty, and Jean Dupas, alongside original transport posters, photography, short films, ceramics, Clarice Cliff pottery, and loans from the Victoria and Albert Museum including a Japanese Government Railway poster by Munetsugu Satomi. The exhibition in the Global Poster Gallery includes rarely seen posters such as ‘Underground; Quickest way out of London’ by Aldo Cosomati (1928), ‘Southend-on-Sea, Surfing’ by Charles Pears (1932), and ‘Tasting the riches of London’ by Frederick Charles Herrick (1927), plus artefacts, historic photography, and streamlined curves of an experimental 1930s Tube train. The exhibition opens 21 November 2025 and is expected to close in spring 2027.
V&A Dundee in Dundee will present ‘Catwalk: The Art of the Fashion Show’, featuring landmark examples from fashion houses including Alexander McQueen, Balenciaga, Chanel, Dior, Maison Margiela, Prada, Paco Rabanne, Viktor & Rolf, Louis Vuitton and Yoji Yamamoto, displayed alongside film and photographs, original collection pieces, stage props and archival material documenting over 100 years of fashion show history. The venue will also host ‘Design and Disability’, showcasing around 170 objects across three sections—Visibility, Tools and Living—including Microsoft’s adaptive Xbox controller, OXO Good Grips prototypes, DIY objects and zines spanning design, art, architecture, fashion and photography from the 1940s to present. ‘Catwalk: The Art of the Fashion Show’ runs 3 April 2026 – 17 January 2027.
‘Commodities: Sculpture and Ceramics by Renee So’ at Compton Verney displays over 30 works including ceramics, vessels, sculptures, wall-mounted murals, bronze and stained glass works, textiles and paintings. Featured objects include oversized ceramic snuff bottles, perfume bottles, a bronze magic mirror created with master craftsman Yamamoto Akihisa, portraits of East Asian women footballers, and works incorporating silkworm motifs inspired by the Taotie mask. The exhibition runs 20 September 2025 – 08 March 2026.
Kenwood House in London presents ‘Double Vision: Vermeer at Kenwood’, displaying two versions of ‘The Guitar Player’ side-by-side for the first time in over 300 years. The exhibition features Vermeer’s signed 1672 masterpiece from Kenwood’s collection alongside an unsigned version on loan from the John G. Johnson Collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, with the Philadelphia painting displayed in its unrestored state showing visible damage and alterations. The display is open now and runs until 11 January 2026.
The ‘British Blind Sport at 50’ exhibition at Market Hall Museum in Warwick celebrates the charity’s 50th anniversary, featuring local blind and partially sighted athletes including a London 2012 Paralympics torchbearer, one of the first visually impaired Nordic skiers representing ParalympicsGB, and the first blind woman to swim the English Channel. The ground floor exhibition includes sensory installations, film extracts, and audio descriptions via QR codes, with content co-created by blind and partially sighted volunteers from Warwickshire Vision Support. The exhibition runs from 05 September 2025 – 14 March 2026.
‘Gladiators of Britain’, a British Museum Partnership touring exhibition, brings together 25 items from the British Museum and Colchester Museums collections alongside objects from local museum partners to explore the history of gladiatorial fights in Roman Britain. The Grosvenor Museum in Chester will feature objects found at the city’s amphitheatre site, including an altar to the goddess Nemesis, while examining the social position of enslaved fighters and different classes of gladiators such as venators who fought wild beasts. The exhibition runs from 20 September 2025 – 25 January 2026.
Funding
Watts Gallery Trust in Compton, Surrey has been awarded over £340,000 in grants from the Wolfson Foundation, National Lottery Heritage Fund, and Foyle Foundation to fund essential repairs to the Environmental Control System in its Grade II* listed gallery building. The vital upgrades, which began onsite and will complete by the end of 2025, will improve conditions for visitors and staff while ensuring the gallery continues to meet Government Indemnity requirements for displaying works by Victorian artist George Frederic Watts.
