Appointments
The Museum of Homelessness has announced Nathan East as its new Museum Manager. East brings experience from a career working with the homeless community, including at akt, a non-profit supporting young LGBT+ people experiencing or at risk of homelessness in the UK.
Six trustees have been reappointed to National Museums Liverpool by the culture secretary. Heather Blyth, Sarah Dean, Paul Eccleson, Rita Mclean, Anthony Wilson will serve second terms of 3 years to 17th May 2026 and David Flemming will serve a second term of 4 years until 28th February 2027.
The International Council of Museums (ICOM) has appointed Medea Ekner as its interim Director General. Ekner was elected as Vice Chair of the ICOM Advisory Council and held this role until her appointment as interim Director General at the start of the month. She is a former Chair of ICOM Sweden and Board Member of the ICOM Nord Regional Alliance.
Openings
The River & Rowing Museum in Henley-on-Thames has announced it will reopen to visitors on Saturday 1 July 2023, after being closed for nine months for roof renovations and refurbishment. The museum had hoped to be open in Spring 2023, but the renovations were pushed back due to bad weather in the early months of the year.
The new Museum of Land Speed has opened, after a three year project to update what was formerly ‘The Museum of Speed’ on the Welsh coast. Based alongside the seven miles of Pendine Sands in Carmarthenshire, the museum sits at the site of many land speed record attempts, dating back to the 1920s.
Exhibitions
An exhibition of street artist Banky’s work is to go on display at Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art. The ticketed event will feature a retrospective of work and stencils daying back to 1998. The gallery will be open throughout the night on weekends for visitors. “I’ve kept these stencils hidden away for years, mindful they could be used as evidence in a charge of criminal damage. But that moment seems to have passed, so now I’m exhibiting them in a gallery as works of art. I’m not sure which is the greater crime,” said the artist.
A new solo exhibition by artist Toni Harrower is set to open at Duff House in Banff, Scotland tomorrow, (16 June 2023). ’May Your Thoughts Write the Rest’ features paintings displayed with corresponding poetry. Harrower, an abstract systems painter, uses the titles of each art work generated from the words found to be significant in the poems. Runs until Sunday 10 September 2023.
The National Portrait Gallery announces its commission of a posthumous portrait of Terry Higgins, one of the first people in the UK to die of an AIDS related illness. Supported by Terrence Higgins Trust – the first charity in the UK to be set up in response to the HIV epidemic – the portrait is unveiled in their 40th year to mark what would have been Higgins’ 78th birthday. ‘Three Ages of Terry’, by Curtis Holder, will go on display for the first time when the gallery reopens next week.
The first solo exhibition by the British artist EVEWRIGHT goes on display next month at Firstsite. ‘Libation’ is a collection of works spanning 20 years, and includes a new floor drawing artwork which will extend from the front to the back of the Colchester gallery. The exhibition will “instigate and broaden conversations about what it means to be Black and British in the UK today via a series of emotionally-charged drawings, sculptures, digital films, photography, and recent performance, all of which explore themes of migration, identity, race, class and journeys,” it said. Runs 8 July – 29 October 2023.
The Postal Museum in London has a new exhibition exploring the history of Britain’s postal uniform. Included in the exhibition will be a mail coach guard’s uniform, the first type of uniform to be issued, originally in 1784, the Royal Mail’s first ever maternity dress, issued in 1993, and the latest Royal Mail uniforms, from the ‘Resistance’ range. Opens 18 October 2023.
