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 Natural History Museum has appointed Chris Till as its new director of development. Till joins the museum from Greenpeace International, where he is currently global philanthropy director, leading global partnerships and high-value fundraising programmes.
Natural History Museum appoints Greenpeace fundraising lead to director of development
The National Army Museum has announced the appointment of Steve Miller MBE as its new director. Miller will take up the role in early 2027, succeeding Justin Maciejewski DSO MBE, who stepped down after more than eight years in the role.
Openings & closures
The Manchester City Museum Experience will open on 14 December in the £300m Medlock Square entertainment district at the Etihad Campus, with a temporary exhibition marking Pep Guardiola’s decade as manager. Designed with Ralph Appelbaum Associates, the 1,700 square-metre museum spans ten spaces combining immersive technology, interactive media and original memorabilia, including a recreation of Maine Road and displays of the club’s major trophies, to tell its story from 1880 to the present.
Exhibitions
Chew Valley Hoard: Coins, Kings & Conquest
The Roman Baths | Bath
Opening: 8 January 2027 – Closing: 14 March 2027
The Roman Baths presents ‘Chew Valley Hoard: Coins, Kings & Conquest’, the first time the hoard has gone on public display outside London and the venue’s first temporary exhibition, presented in partnership with South West Heritage Trust. The Chew Valley Hoard consists of 2,584 silver coins dating from around AD 1066–68, the largest coin hoard discovered from the immediate aftermath of the Norman Conquest, shown alongside objects from The Roman Baths collection, including material on Bath’s own mint.
Becoming America: How Science Shaped a Nation
Science Museum | London
Open now – Closing: 25 April 2027
The Science Museum presents ‘Becoming America’, a free exhibition marking the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, examining how science and technology shaped the United States across four decades from the 1760s to the 1790s. Created with the support of the Library of Congress, it features over a hundred objects, including a rare 1776 Dunlap print of the Declaration, Benjamin Franklin’s Gulf Stream map and a Mashpee Wampanoag dugout canoe.bition forms part of the British Museum’s Bayeux Around Britain programme.
Frankenthaler and Bassano
The National Gallery | London
Opening: 17 June 2027 – Closing: 5 September 2027
The National Gallery presents ‘Frankenthaler and Bassano’, uniting for the first time Helen Frankenthaler’s five-metre-wide ‘Hint from Bassano’ (1973) with the painting that inspired it, Jacopo Bassano’s ‘The Flight into Egypt’ (about 1544–45), on loan from the Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena. The free display continues the Gallery’s partnership with the Norton Simon Museum, where the two paintings travel afterwards.
Winter Past
Museum of the Home | London
Opening: 17 November 2026 – Closing: 10 January 2027
The Museum of the Home presents its annual ‘Winter Past’ exhibition, dressing its Rooms Through Time with seasonal festivities to explore how traditions shape home life across the winter months. Spanning London homes from a Midwinter feast in 1630 through to an imagined 2049, it covers settings including a 1683 Thames Frost Fair, Hanukkah in 1913 and a British Vietnamese Christmas in 2024, and is curated with the Museum’s Community Authors.
Funding
The Brontë Society has been awarded £232,058 by The National Lottery Heritage Fund to develop plans for new purpose-built storage for its collection of more than 8,000 objects, the world’s largest collection of Brontë-related material. Running until 2027, ahead of the Brontë Parsonage Museum’s centenary in 2028, the project will also explore reusing three recently acquired historic buildings in Haworth and record the curatorial team’s specialist knowledge.
