Appointments
The National Gallery has announced its Artist in Residence for 2024 as London-born and based artist Katrina Palmer.Beginning the residency next month, Palmer has been invited to respond to the collections of the National Gallery and its partner museum in the project, museum and art gallery Touchstones Rochdale.
Michelle Charters has been announced as the new Head of the International Slavery Museum, and will take up the role in the new year, the museum has announced.
Dr Lindsay Rudge will take up the role of Chief Operating Officer and Divisional Registrar for the Gardens, Libraries & Museums at The University of Oxford next year. Rudge is currently COO at the Bodleian Libraries, and will take up the new role from 1 February 2024.
Openings
Barnsley Museums has announced that funding options are being explored for a £25m development at the former site of the Elsecar Ironworks in South Yorkshire. A new heritage railway, new rail college and outdoor events area are planned at the historic site, now a scheduled ancient monument , as a legacy project of its Heritage Action Zone partnership with Historic England.
Plans revealed for £25m heritage railway destination in South Yorkshire
Exhibitions
The first permanent display at the British Museum of Peruvian and Andean culture has opened in the Wellcome Trust Gallery. The gallery was opened at an event attended by Peru’s Minister of Foreign Trade and Tourism. Part of the Living and Dying exhibition, the new display focuses on the stories of the people of Peru and the Andean world.
A new virtual reality fashion experience is to open at V&A Dundee. Dundee-based fashion and textiles social enterprise Scotland Re:Design (SRD) will present an immersive fashion show through VR and holographic content, where the clothes, models and showcasing of garments are all constructed digitally. Titled HIDDEN FLOORS, it will display collections and exhibitors created especially for the exhibition on a digital runway, also visible via a QR code on visitor’s own phones. The work is set to be unveiled on Friday 17th November 2023 at the annual Opening Night Gala of the annual Scottish Fashion Festival.
Tate Britain has opened its ‘Women in Revolt!’ exhibition, featuring feminist art in the UK from 1970 to 1990. Painting, drawing, photography, textiles, printmaking, film, sculpture, and archival materials have been brought together to “map a landscape of creative practice forged against a backdrop of extreme social, economic, and political change.” Runs until 7 April 2024.
The Hunterian at the University of Glasgow has invited filmmaker and scholar Manthia Diawara and art historian and curator Terri Geis to collaborate on a group exhibition that “reframes the African art and textiles which form part of its permanent collection”. ‘The Trembling Museum’ exhibition features objects including musical instruments, sculptures, paintings, and clothing which have been historically classified as ‘ethnographic’ collection objects, rarely considered within the conceptual context of art. The exhibition will feature recent acquisitions and other loans to bring further contemporary works into dialogue with The Hunterian’s African material. Runs 2 December 2023 – 19 May 2024.
A large-scale virtual model of a human heart is now on display in the Science Museum, created by bioengineer Dr Jazmín Aguado Sierra. Using scans of her own heart, the virtual heart, which sits in the Bodies section, functions just like her own. Visitors can see the Virtual Heart display, which Dr Aguado Sierra introduces, within the Engineers gallery. The Virtual Heart simulation was made using data and a high-performance supercomputer.
‘The Printmaker’s Art: Rembrandt to Rego’ opens at National Galleries of Scotland this winter, an exhibition exploring the history of printmaking across four galleries with around 100 artworks by artists, including Rembrandt, Hokusai, Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Bridget Riley and Paula Rego. The exhibition includes early woodcuts, pop-art, and new artworks acquired through the Iain Paul Fund on display together for the first time. Runs 2 December 2023 – 25 February 2024.
A new exhibition looking at Glasgow’s links to transatlantic slavery and colonialism has opened at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. ‘Glasgow – City of Empire’ explores how the city’s past and present have been “heavily shaped by histories of slavery and Empire, and their legacies”, in a display co-curated with the Our Shared Cultural Heritage (OSCH) Changemakers, a group of young people who explore the shared cultures and histories of the UK and South Asia. Alongside objects from its collection, the exhibition features digital resources, including audio-visual installations, and QR codes pointing to online content and a Smartify audio tour.
