March 2024
Perth Museum reveals its £27m transformation
Visitors will get their first look at the £27 million investment project which has transformed Perth’s former City Hall. Construction on the new museum began in 2021, as the former Perth Museum and Art Gallery was separated. The museum takes up its new home at the heritage Edwardian building, while the former Perth Museum and Art Gallery became the Perth Art Gallery. Doors are set to open to the public in March 2024.
Blackpool’s ‘museum of fun’ Showtown opens to the public
Originally planned for a 2021 opening, construction on Showtown museum in Blackpool began in 2021 and doors were last planned to open in April 2023. The new opening date follows the first photos of its interior, which were shared earlier this year.
The Inaugural exhibition opens at the Women’s Museum in East London
The inaugural exhibition at the new Women’s Museum in East London is set to open on International Women’s Day 2024. The museum, developed by Barking and Dagenham Council, is described as “a socially engaged exhibition and community space, which will give platform to the experiences of women, girls and allies from the area and beyond.” A new artwork by Meera Shakri Osbourne, which will be the first in a series of commissions by contemporary artists for the inaugural exhibition ‘An Idea of a Life’ will be on show from Friday 8 March 2024.
May 2024
The National Gallery’s Bicentenary celebrated across the UK
To celebrate 200 years of the National Gallery, the ‘NG200: National Treasures’ project will see twelve simultaneous exhibitions opening on the same day, 10 May 2024 , at twelve museums and galleries across the twelve regions of the four nations of the UK.
Each of the exhibitions will be centred around a National Treasure, which has been designed so that more than half the UK population will be within an hour’s journey of a National Gallery masterpiece.
The celebrations also include the creation a network of UK-based digital creative influencers. Applications opened in September for digital creators to make ‘digital content’ which responds to its collection, exhibitions, building, and day-to-day activities. Those selected will be named a Creative Collaborator, or will join the Gallery’s newly created 200 Creators Network.
Spring 2024
Museum of Homelessness to open to the public
The Museum of Homelessness plans to open its doors to the public in Spring 2024. Community programs have already begun at the museum’s first location, at Manor House Lodge in Finsbury Park, London, where it has signed a ten-year community lease agreement. The museum had originally planned to open to the public in 2023 , but it announced earlier this year that it would be pushing back its opening date.
Summer 2024
Bradford’s Peace Museum to open in World Heritage Site mill
The Peace Museum in Bradford, which closed during the pandemic,will move to Salts Mill, a mill building in Saltaire, a nearby village and UNESCO World Heritage Site. The project, ‘IMAGINE: Creating The Peace Museum of the Future’, will see the creation of public exhibition and engagement spaces. The opening, ahead of Bradford becoming the City of Culture in 2025, is hoped to allow it to benefit from a boost in visitors.
Tullie to revealed the second phase of ‘Project Tullie’
Tullie Museum in Carlisle will close later this month until summer 2024, as it begins the second phase of its multi-year redevelopment project, Project Tullie. Building work is scheduled to start in January, and is supported by the UK Government’s Towns Fund and Future High Streets Fund.
Planned for 2024
Museum of London’s digital platform to launch
While the Museum of London is not set to open until 2026, its new digital platform – developed with the support of Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Digital Accelerator for Arts and Culture – is set to launch in 2024. It will include 5,000 newly public oral histories from around the capital, and is hoped to allow visitors to customise and personalise their journeys around the new museum at the West Smithfield site under a new name -The London Museum.
A new permanent exhibition space at the National Railway Museum’s Station Hall
A transformed former goods station in York is set to be open to the public in 2024 at the National Railway Museum’s Station Hall. Created by exhibition designers Drinkall Dean, the space will feature archive films and clips projected throughout the gallery interpretation, new large-scale reproductions of photographs from the museum’s collection, and new lighting. Concept designs of the new space were revealed earlier this year.
