Appointments

London Museum of Water & Steam has announced that its new director will be Hannah Harte. Harte has previously served at the National Trust, British Museum and National Archives, and will take up the role from 5th June 2023.

London Transport Museum is on the hunt for a new top executive as Sam Mullins OBE, its Chief Executive and Director has announced he will step down from the role later this year. Mullins will leave the role on the appointment of a successor.

London Transport Museum Chief Executive Sam Mullins OBE to step down

Openings

Following its closure last year after Nottingham Castle Trust’s liquidation, Nottingham City Council is laying out plans to reopen Nottingham Castle to the public as early as June. The plans are to be put to the Council next week.

Nottingham Castle could reopen as early June

Plans for the £50m redevelopment of Ulster Folk Museum have been submitted by its parent organisation National Museums NI to Ards and North Down Borough Council. The plans will are also being put to a community consultation later this month.

Plans submitted for £50 million Ulster Folk Museum redevelopment

Exhibitions

The Tower of London is set to transform its Jewel House, home of the Crown Jewels, with a new display, the first major change to the Jewel House at the Tower of London for over a decade. It will explore more stories about the history of the Monarchy’s collection, and will open shortly after the King’s Coronation on May 26 2023.

Tower of London to open transformed Crown Jewels display after Coronation

The National Justice Museum’s new interventional exhibition features a series of black and white photos from photographer Brian Griffin entitled “Darkness”. The subjects of the work are pieces from the museum’s collection of crime and punishment artefacts. The portraits will be hung in what the museum calls “unexpected and authentic spaces” around the Nottingham venue from April.

Artist and photographer Gregor Sailer’s first UK exhibition ‘The Polar Silk Road’ will open at the Natural History Museum in London in May (pictured above). The exhibition documents the wide-reaching impacts of climate change through 67 photographs and a short film designed to provoke questions surrounding humankind’s complex relationship with the environment. Runs from from 26 May 2023.

‘What is it That Will Last?’ is the first exhibition in the newly refurbished Abbot Hall art gallery in Kendal, Cumbria. The reopening show, which will span all the gallery spaces, spotlights a decade of work by British artist Julie Brook in an exhibition of film, drawing and photography spanning recent works made in the Outer Hebrides, in the Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan and Cumbria. Runs 20 May – 30 Dec 2023.

Manchester Jewish Museum has announced a new temporary exhibition, “Narratives: Threads and Testimony”, which combines textile, installation and sound pieces exploring family history surrounding the Holocaust. The work was made during NARRATIVES, a collaborative six-month residency by twelve artists brought together by Venture Arts, The Lowry and Castlefield Gallery, with support from associates Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race Relations Resource Centre and Education Trust, Explorers Project and Manchester Jewish Museum. Runs 7 April – 9 May 2023.

Funding

The Brontë Society is among eight organisations to receive a share of £50k from Bradford Council after applying for an Arts, Culture and Heritage grant recently. It will commission an artist or prop-maker to create a number of artefacts that replicate or are inspired by items in its collection at the Bronte Parsonage Museum. The commissioned replica artefacts are designed to be both transportable, and serve as an accessible and tactile learning resource for visually impaired museum visitors to engage with the collections through touch and other senses.

Back to top

Image: EastGRIP I, Northeast Greenland Ice Sheet, Ice Core Project, 2019, © Gregor Sailer