Appointments
The Design Museum has announced Stuart Roden as its Chair of the Board of Trustees. Roden replaces Lord Mandelson, who steps down in June at the end of his current term, having served as Chair since 2017.
The National Science and Media Museum has appointed Charlotte Connelly as Head Curator and Sally Folkard as Head of Screen and Cultural Engagement. Connelly, a historian of science and technology, was most recently Museum Curator at The Polar Museum at the Scott Polar Research Institute, and has previously worked at the Science Museum as part of the team that delivered the Information Age gallery. Folkard was previously Head of Film Hub North and will oversee the museum’s festivals and cinema programme.
Tate Modern has announced the appointment of a new Director. Karin Hindsbo, currently Director of The National Museum, Oslo, will take over the role from Frances Morris in September.
Openings
The Museum of Technology, The History of Gadgets and Gizmos in Spalding, Lincolnshire is set to reopen on 25th of May 2023. The museum will open three days a week until September.
Next month the Museum of London Docklands will celebrate twenty years since it was first opened by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, with a series of events and a street party. Plans include live performances, street food, pop-up bars, talks and tours, workshops, film screenings, a makers market, pub quiz and after hours gallery access.
Museum of London Docklands and National Portrait Gallery plan milestone celebrations
Exhibitions
A new exhibition at Newcastle’s Laing Art Gallery will trace the different approaches to British landscape painting, from the mid-Victorian era through to the 1920s. ‘Essence of Nature: Pre-Raphaelites to British Impressionists’ features around 100 oil and watercolours by leading artists from the Pre-Raphaelite, Rural Naturalist and British Impressionist schools together, represented by such artists as William Holman Hunt, John Ruskin and William Dyce, brought together form collections around the UK. Runs 27 May – 14 October 2023
A new exhibition exploring the relationship between luxury and power in the Middle East and southeast Europe between 550-30 BC has opened at the British Museum. ‘Luxury and power: Persia to Greece’ features a Panagyurishte Treasure from Bulgaria, a gold wreath from Turkey, and a Persian gilt silver rhyton shaped as a griffin. Runs until 13 August 2023.
The National Gallery will showcase children’s artworks in the 28th annual Take One Picture exhibition this summer (pictured above). Each year the Gallery invites primary schools nationwide to focus on one of its paintings and respond creatively, following the children’s questions and ideas. Students this year take inspiration from Claude-Joseph Vernet’s A Shipwreck in Stormy Seas.This year’s exhibition will include creative projects from 40 primary schools. Runs 13 July – 8 October 2023.
‘Painted Love: Renaissance Marriage Portraits’ at the Holburne Museum brings together a collection of paintings and miniatures, and complementary objects relating to marriage, as it explores portraiture as an essential part of the historical matrimonial process. Loaned artworks from the National Gallery, British Museum, V&A and The Royal Collection, add to an exhibition of 50 pieces of Netherlandish, German, French, British and Italian art. Runs 26 May – 1 October 2023.
‘Turn It Up: The power of music’ is to open at London’s Science Museum, after its opening run at sister site the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester comes to an end. The interactive exhibition allows visitors to “learn about the science behind music, how technology is changing the way it is made and enjoyed, and how music is being used to have an impact on the way we live our lives.”. It closes in Manchester on Sunday 21 May and will open in London on 19 October 2023 until 6 May 2024.
An exhibition dedicated to the style of Princess Diana opens in Ireland tomorrow (5 May 2023). Three garments that Princess Diana had owned and worn, last seen in public when they were auctioned by Christie’s in 1997, are to be displayed in ‘Princess Diana – Fashion from the Wardrobe of The People’s Princess’ at The Museum of Style Icons at Newbridge Silverware in Newbridge, Co. Kildare.
Funding
Beamish Museum has received £225,000 from the Friends of Beamish – taking the Friends’ total donations to an amazing £2.1million. The latest donation, which is from the Friends of Beamish and Business Friends of Beamish, will go towards the Remaking Beamish project, which is currently underway and includes a 1950s Town and Farm, and expansion of the Georgian Landscape.
Leighton House has launched an urgent appeal to raise funds towards the acquisition of a painting by artist Lawrence Alma-Tadema, gifted to Leighton and displayed in his studio-home in Kensington. An opportunity has arisen to acquire ‘In My Studio’ (1893), currently on loan, as part of the museum’s ongoing efforts to recover Leighton’s lost collections, dispersed after his death in 1895. A public fundraising campaign is seeking to raise £50,000 before 10 May towards the cost of acquiring the painting for permanent display
Image: Ship on Polluted Seas, by children aged 5–8 from the Extended Learning Facility at Dalmilling Primary School, Scotland – National Gallery
