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 Chief Executive of sport and culture charity Glasgow Life, Susan Deighan, is to retire from the organisation after 18 years. Deighan has been involved in the charity since helping to create it in 2007. A search for a successor is expected to begin shortly.
Openings and closures
A libation ceremony has marked the temporary closure of Liverpool’s International Slavery Museum as it prepares for its redevelopment. Staff, visitors and community members came together for the ceremony over the weekend. The ceremony marks the start of essential repairs and maintenance works ahead of a major redevelopment project, which is subject to funding.
A petition to halt the potential closure of a council-run Leeds museum has secured more than 3,000 signatures.In December 2024, Leeds City Council announced it was considering plans to close Abbey House Museum, as part of measures to address a £106.4m savings requirement for its 2025/26 budget. An online petition now hopes to change the council’s cost-saving strategy.
Petition to halt Leeds museum closure gains thousands of signatures
The National Science and Media Museum has reopened to visitors with a surprise new object on display as part of its celebrations. A two meter tall replica of the ‘Techno Trousers’ seen in Wallace & Gromit: The Wrong Trousers has been hung from its walls.Created for the museum by Aardman, the company behind Wallace & Gromit, the trousers are visible in the museum’s new foyer space, above the welcome desk.
National Science and Media Museum reveals ‘wrong trousers’ for reopening
Exhibitions
‘The Edwardians: Age of Elegance’ at the recently renamed King’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, explores the opulent lives of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra, and King George V and Queen Mary through more than 300 objects. The exhibition features fashion, jewellery, paintings, photographs and ceramics, including works by Fabergé, Leighton, Burne-Jones, Sargent, de László, Morris, Wilde and Elgar, with nearly half the items displayed for the first time. The exhibition runs from 11 April 2025 – 23 November 2025.
The Fitzwilliam Museum has opened ‘Picturing Excess: Jan Davidsz de Heem’, bringing together four still life paintings for the first time since their creation in the 1640s, including ‘Fruits and rich dishes on a table’ (Louvre), ‘Still life with Boy and Parrots’ (Brussels City Museum), ‘Still life in a palatial setting’ (UK Private Collection), and ‘A banquet still life’ (US Private Collection). The works will be displayed alongside still life paintings and drawings from the museum’s permanent collection by Dutch artists Pieter Claesz, Adriaen Coorte, and Jan van Huysum. The exhibition runs until 13 April 2025.
‘Sirens: Women and the Sea’ at Hull’s Ferens Art Gallery explores mythological female creatures and maritime narratives through works by Pre-Raphaelites John William Waterhouse, Evelyn De Morgan and Edward Burne-Jone, alongside Herbert James Draper’s ‘Ulysses and the Sirens’. The exhibition features new musical compositions by folk musician and Artist in Residence Maddie Morris, created with community groups and inspired by Draper’s painting. The exhibition opens 14 February 2025 (end date not provided).
York Art Gallery has announced ‘Harland Miller: XXX’, a new exhibition by the Yorkshire-born artist, featuring paintings and works on paper from his ‘Letter Paintings’ series. The exhibition features several new works by Miller, one of which celebrates the city of York. The exhibition runs from 14 March 2025 – 31 August 2025.
The Horniman Museum and Gardens presents ‘The Robot Zoo’, featuring larger-than-life robotic animals including a rhino, an 18-foot-tentacled squid, a huge housefly, a six-foot bat, giraffes and grasshoppers, alongside interactive games and specially commissioned murals by artist Giulia Casarotto. Through mechanical adaptations using pistons, pipes and computerised ‘brains’, these robotic creatures demonstrate how real animals see, hear, hunt, hide and move. The exhibition runs from 14 February 2025 – 2 November 2025.
The Holburne Museum presents ‘I have more souls than one’, an exhibition of recent works by Ghanian-British painter Joshua Donkor. The exhibition features portraits that explore family history and identity through a collaborative process with the sitter. The Holburne said the work “is deeply personal, using portraiture to reflect family history, identities and experiences, exploring how feelings of belonging and estrangement play out through different generations”. The exhibition runs from 18 January 2025 – 5 May 2025.
‘Hans Coper: Resurface’ at The Gallery at The Arc, Winchester, brings together all three of the celebrated studio potter’s murals – from a Winchester military base, Yorkshire school, and London office – marking the first and only time these works will be displayed together publicly. The exhibition also features over 20 of Coper’s pots, rare clay prints, a mould for an acoustic wall tile, a large incised plaster panel, studio photographs by his wife Jane, and maquettes of his Coventry Cathedral candlesticks. The exhibition runs from 22 January 2025 – 24 March 2025.
