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 British Motor Museum in Warwickshire has appointed a new CEO, who is returning to his home country to take up the role. Peter Armstrong will become chief operating officer from September. The move comes following the retirement of the museum’s former CEO Jeff Coope, who retired in March after 23 years at the museum.
Openings and closures
Today, Thursday, July 10, the National Science and Media Museum will open its permanent Sound and Vision galleries. The opening marks the completion of a £6.8m transformation of the museum, with the new galleries spanning two floors. The museum will showcase collections of photography, film, television, animation, gaming, and sound technologies.
Jewry Wall Museum in Leicester opens as ‘A Real Roman Experience’ on Saturday 26 July, featuring the remains of a 2nd century Roman bath house and displaying over 100 Roman artefacts discovered locally including mosaics, wall plasters, jewellery, pottery, bronzework and coins. The attraction is housed in a refurbished Grade II-listed former college designed by architect Trevor Dannatt.
The V&A has announced that its David Bowie Centre will open on 13 September 2025 at V&A East Storehouse. The new area will feature guest-curated displays by musician and producer Nile Rodgers and rock band The Last Dinner Party. The Centre will function as both a working store and permanent home for David Bowie’s archive whilst offering free public access.
The River & Rowing Museum in Henley-on-Thames is to permanently close, it has been announced. The Foundation of the River & Rowing Museum said the museum, opened in 1998, will close its doors to the public on 21st September.
River & Rowing Museum to close: “financial challenge simply too great”
Exhibitions
‘More than Human’ at the Design Museum in London presents over 140 works by more than 50 participants exploring design that considers non-human species and environments. The exhibition features major new commissions including Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg’s tapestry on pollinator perspectives, an 8m-long mural by MOTH depicting legal rights for waterways, Paulo Tavares’ mapping techniques with Indigenous communities, Feifei Zhou’s multispecies coastal exchange observations, and Julia Lohmann’s large-scale seaweed installation ‘Kelp Council’. The exhibition runs 11 July 2025 – 5 October 2025.
The National Gallery in London will present ‘Renoir and Love’, featuring over 50 works by Pierre-Auguste Renoir focusing on his career from the mid-1860s to mid-1880s. The exhibition includes the iconic Bal au Moulin de la Galette (1876, Musée d’Orsay, Paris), being shown in the UK for the first time, alongside Umbrellas (1881, reworked 1885, National Gallery) and works from international collections including Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen, the Städel Museum, Frankfurt, and the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. The exhibition runs 3 October 2026 – 31 January 2027.
Manchester Museum presents ‘The Cat That Slept for a Thousand Years’, a world premiere exhibition featuring a 10-metre-long inflatable, robotic cat created in collaboration with creative robotics studio Air Giants. The exhibition combines the giant, pneumatically-controlled creature with curious objects from Manchester Museum’s collections, inviting visitors to interact with the responsive, illuminated feline as it peacefully naps. The exhibition runs 19 July 2025 – 14 September 2025.
‘Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art’ will comprise over 200 objects spanning the 1920s to the present day, including garments, accessories, jewellery, paintings, photographs, sculpture, furniture, perfumes and archive material. The exhibition will feature the V&A’s ‘Skeleton’ dress and ‘Tears’ dress, along with a hat shaped to look like an upside-down shoe, all conceived in collaboration with Salvador Dalí, plus artworks by Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau and Man Ray. The Victoria and Albert Museum in London will present this first UK exhibition devoted to Schiaparelli from 21 March 2026 – 1 November 2026.
Buckingham Palace presents ‘The King’s Tour Artists’ exhibition featuring more than 70 works from His Majesty The King’s private collection, many never before publicly displayed, celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Tour Artists initiative. The exhibition in the Ballroom showcases works by 43 artists who have accompanied The King on 70 tours to 95 countries since 1985, including John Ward’s ‘From the Afterdeck of HMY Britannia’, Fraser Scarfe’s digital work ‘Basilica of San Vitale’, portraits by James Hart Dyke, and a terracotta head by Marcus Cornish. The exhibition runs from 10 July to 28 September 2025.
‘Beyond the Bonnets’ at The Gallery at The Arc in Winchester marks Jane Austen’s 250th anniversary by exploring the overlooked stories of working women in Georgian Hampshire through both her novels and real-life accounts. The exhibition features 65 objects including a calico apron, wooden patten, tortoiseshell hair comb, a reproduction Calendar of Prisoners from 1790, and a reproduction of the 1773 edition of Harris’s List alongside a jelly mould. The display runs 26 July – 2 November 2025.
The National Portrait Gallery in London presents the Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer Portrait Award 2025, featuring 46 selected portrait works including Moira Cameron’s winning self-portrait ‘A Life Lived’, Tim Benson’s second-place ‘Cliff, Outreach Worker’, Martyn Harris’s third-place ‘Memories’, and Michelle Liu’s Young Artist Award-winning ‘Kofi’. The competition’s 43rd edition offers prize money totalling £66,000 across four categories, with first prize worth £35,000. The exhibition runs from 10 July 2025 – 12 October 2025.
‘Treasure: History Unearthed’ presents the largest collection of archaeological treasure ever displayed in the North West, featuring Viking silver, Bronze Age hoards, medieval gold brooches, Roman rings, and the internationally significant Mold Gold Cape. The exhibition showcases over 30 items from the British Museum collection alongside significant objects from Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales, Wrexham County Borough Museum, and Nantwich Museum, with interpretation available in both English and Welsh. Museum of Liverpool hosts the exhibition from 13 September 2025 – 29 March 2026.
Funding
Cyfarthfa Castle in Merthyr Tydfil is celebrating its 200th anniversary with a £4.5m grant to address urgent conservation needs. The funding, from the Welsh Government and Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Council, will be used to restore the castle and protect Pont-y-Cafnau bridge. The grant aims to boost visitor numbers and support the long-term development of the Cyfarthfa Heritage Area.
