Exhibition highlights from NMDC members 2014 6 Feb 2014
A selection of major exhibitions and highlights from NMDC museums for 2014. As of January 2014, about half have contributed listings - we will be adding the second half in early February.
Bristol Museums
Jeremy Deller – English Magic
Bristol Museum and Art Gallery – 12th April – 21st September 2014
This exhibition was commissioned by the British Council for the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2013. It reflects Deller’s interest in the diverse nature of British society and its broad cultural, socio-political and economic history. The exhibition visits and interprets particular events or moments from the past, present and imagined future and Deller weaves a narrative thread through the exhibition, which draws in references such as politics, tax evasion, the Iraq war and Ziggy Stardust. Installations include large-scale mural paintings, drawings, photographs, and film, alongside historical materials and artefacts.
The tour is the first of its kind and will enable audiences across the country to see the exhibition at the William Morris Gallery, Walthamstow; Bristol Museum & Art Gallery; and Turner Contemporary, Margate in 2014.
At Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, Deller will develop several new installations and commissions for the exhibition, in direct response to the museum’s own collections. A new display, relating to the history of the Venice Biennale and the British Pavilion, will also be included.
British Library
Beautiful Science
20th February – 26th May
Beautiful Science explores how our understanding of ourselves and our planet has evolved alongside our ability to represent, graph, and map the mass data of the time. From John Snow’s plotting of the 1854 London cholera infections on a map, to colourful depictions of the tree of life, discover how picturing scientific data provides new insight into our lives.
Comics Unmasked: Art and Anarchy in the UK
2nd May – 19th August
Featuring some of the biggest names in comics, including Alan Moore (Watchmen, V for Vendetta), Neil Gaiman (Sandman), Mark Millar (Kick-Ass) and Grant Morrison (Batman: Arkham Asylum), the British comics tradition stretches back to the Victorian era and beyond, where strange opium-inspired dream comics were the very first popular full-colour entertainment. This is the first time a major institution has brought together a major history of comics. Its materials unflinchingly examine issues around gender, violence, sexuality, drug-taking and politics.
Enduring War: Grief, Grit and Humour
19th June – 12th October 2014
The British Library will present Enduring War: Grief, Grit and Humour, a free exhibition in the Library’s Folio Society Gallery which will examine the question of how people coped with life during the Great War, from moments of patriotic fervour to periods of anxious inactivity, shock or despair.
Terror and Wonder: The Gothic Imagination (working title)
3rd October 2014 – 27th January 2015
Opening on Halloween 2013, this exhibition celebrates the 250th anniversary of the first ever gothic publication, The Castle of Otranto.
The 18th century witnessed an explosion in ultra-imaginative writing with authors throwing off the shackles of convention and harnessing their emotions and imagination beyond reason: a direct riposte to the rationality of the Enlightenment. Writers revelled in setting their tales in atmospheric and remote surroundings – castles, monasteries, ruins – and populating their stories with aristocrats, nuns and wayward monks. However, far from being formulaic, this early Gothic literature has since influenced classic writers like Mary Shelley, Robert Louis Stevenson, Bram Stoker, Mervyn Peake and Angela Carter.
The exhibition will cover not just literature, but film, fashion music and more, showing how all of these seemingly different areas are connected and what ties them together.
British Museum
Vikings: Life and Legend
6th March – 22nd June
The first major Viking exhibition at the British Museum in thirty years. Swords and axes, coins and jewellery, hoards, amulets and religious images show how Vikings created an international network connecting cultures over four continents. At the centre of the exhibition will be the surviving timbers of a 37-metre-long Viking warship, the longest ever found.
Cambridge Museums
Discoveries: Art, Science and Exploration
From 31st January 2014
An exhibition exploring human discovery in all its forms, selected from more than five million objects at eight University of Cambridge museum, will open at Two Temple Place in Lndon.
This is the first time Cambridge’s unique, world-class collections have been drawn together under one roof. The exhibition features, among many other objects: ancient fossils, contemporary art, modern Inuit sculpture, Darwin’s only surviving egg from the Beagle voyage, a rare dodo skeleton and a state-of-the art digital instrument that searches for sub-atomic particles in the frozen depths of Antarctica. Several exhibits will be leaving Cambridge or going on public display for the first time.
Cumbria consortium
British Surrealism Unlocked: works from the Sherwin Collection
Abbot Hall Art Gallery 11th April – 21st June 2014
This exhibition comprises key British surrealist works from the extraordinary collection of Dr Jeffrey Sherwin, a GP by profession, who has built up the largest collection of British surrealist art in the country over a period of more than 25 years. Although unified most strongly as an official movement in Britain in the 1930s and 40s, this exhibition will show that surrealism continued, and continues, to infect the work of modern and contemporary artists, from Desmond Morris and Conroy Maddox to Eduardo Paolozzi, John Davies and Damien Hirst.
Barbara Hepworth: Landscape
Abbot Hall Art Gallery 5th July – 28th September
Abbot Hall's summer exhibition focuses on one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century, Dame Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975). The exhibition will contain some of Hepworth's most iconic sculptures including Stringed Figure (Curlew), 1956, Torso III (Galatea), 1958, and Moon Form, 1968, alongside prints, photographs and ephemera detailing the artist's life long relationship with the landscape. Lakeland Arts are working closely with the Hepworth Estate to secure key works as well
as borrowing from national institutions for this important exhibition.
Moorcroft: 100 years of a living art pottery
Blackwell, the Arts & Crafts House 23rd January – 20th July 2014
100 Years of a Living Art Pottery will complete its tour of England with the Centennial Exhibition at Blackwell. The exhibition will display examples of Moorcroft art pottery, spanning 100 years since the formation of the company in April 1913, through to the present day. Each of the main designers will be represented - William Moorcoft (1913-45), Walter Moorcroft (1945-86), Sally Tuffin (1896-92) and Rachel Bishop (1993 to present) as well as a selection of pre-1913 pieces illustrating
the transition William Moorcroft made from employee of James Macintyre & Co to employer.
Glasgow Museums
How Glasgow Flourished; 1714 - 1837
Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum - 18th April - 17th August 2014,
Describes how Glasgow grew into a city of global importance throughout the 1700s right up until the start of Queen Victoria ’s reign. A few fabulously wealthy businessmen, the city’s workers and the industries and great inventions were the drivers for its success. It explores how to make millions, see what life was like for slaves and workers and find out what still remains from that period in Glasgow today.
Alasdair Gray; A Retrospective
Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum - October 2014 - February 2015
More than 100 works will go on display to mark the eightieth birthday of one of Scotland’s most admired artists. It will include the works he produced as ‘city recorder’ in 1977 of the changing landscape of the city.
The Games we play
Scotland Street School Museum - April - August 2014
The exhibition will use toys and games selected from the ethnography, archaeology and social history collections to explore games and play in a variety of time periods and cultures.
GENERATION: 25 years of contemporary art in Scotland
Over 60 galleries in Scotland, including Glasgow Life - March - November
GENERATION is a landmark project celebrating some of the very best art to have emerged from Scotland in the last 25 years. It will bring an a programme of works by over 100 artists to
over 60 galleries, exhibition spaces and venues, with the majority of the exhibitions taking place over
the summer of 2014, as part of the Glasgow 2014 Cultural Programme.
It shines a light on the past 25 years, a period which has seen Scotland develop an international
reputation as a distinguished centre for contemporary art, produce a disproportionate amount of award-winning artists, host a number of ground-breaking exhibitions and foster an infrastructure which has enabled contemporary art to flourish.
Ironbridge Gorge
Jakefield Tile Museum Donation
Summer 2014
A collection of over 1,000 tiles and 300 tile panels of outstanding quality and international significance has been donated by a private collector, John Scott, to the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust in Shropshire. The collection includes examples by the most prestigious designers and manufacturers from the 1850s through to the 1960s, including Pugin, Dresser, Morris, De Morgan and Bawden. It will go on display in a new purpose designed gallery at their Jackfield Tile Museum during summer 2014, with the aspiration that the site will house one of the world’s foremost collections of British decorative tiles.
Laing Art Gallery
Turner and Constable: Sketching from Nature
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, artists including JMW Turner and John Constable took their canvases outdoors and began drawing and painting landscapes in the open air, instead of in their studios. This exhibition brings together more than 60 works by Turner, Constable and their contemporaries, showing the different techniques each artist used to capture views of the landscapes of the time, both in Britain and abroad.
Leeds Museums
Another Condition of Sculpture by Bruce Mclean
Leeds Art Gallery 14th February – 11th May 2014
Bruce McLean is a sculptor who makes work that draws on a variety of media from live art, film, photography, paintings and sculpture. This exhibition will bring together McClean’s recent paintings and look into his significant contribution to ideas of sculpture over the last thirty
years.
The Vanity of Small Differences by Grayson Perry
Temple Newsam House – 23rd August – 5th December 2014
This touring exhibition will be displayed at the House from August to December this year. Temple Newsam House will be the last UK touring venue before the exhibition goes on an
international tour supported by the British Council.
Roman Empire: Power and People
Leeds Museum 20th September 2014 – 4th January 2015
Roman Empire: Power & People combines objects from the British Museum’s collections of Roman, Romano-British and Romano-Egyptian material, never before displayed together in this way. It explores the story of the Roman Empire and its impact both locally in Britain and much further afield in the East. It also provides the opportunity for our visitors to see these objects in their local area for the first time. In addition to the loaned British Museum objects the exhibition presents an opportunity for us to showcase more of Leeds’ own Roman holdings, which will add a regional context to the exhibition, as well as complementing existing displays in the Ancient Worlds gallery.
National Galleries Scotland
John Byrne
Scottish National Portrait Gallery, 7th June - 14th September 2014
This new exhibition will present a broad range of portraiture from across career of one of Scotland’s most celebrated artists. It will be the first major show at the Portrait Gallery to honour the Scottish painter’s work and celebrate his contribution to Scottish art.
American Impressionism
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art - 19th July – 19th October 2014
Supported by the Terra Foundation for American Art, this exhibition will be one of the main highlights of the summer exhibition programme and, will bring together some 80 paintings by major international artists such as James McNeill Whistler, John Singer Sargent and Mary Cassatt. Exploring the response of American artists to French Impressionism, it will also feature a number of significant artists who are probably better known to American audiences – among them Theodore Robinson, Childe Hassam, William Merritt Chase, Edmund Tarbell and John Twachtman. In addition, a selection of pictures by the French impressionists Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, and Edgar Degas will provide a context for the American works.
This major international exhibition has been organized by the musée des impressionnismes Giverny and the Terra Foundation for American Art with the collaboration of the National Galleries of Scotland and the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. For its only UK showing, it will be on display at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Modern Two).
National Museum Wales
Richard Wilson: The Transformation of European Art
National Museum Cardiff – 5th July – 26th October
2014 marks the 300th anniversary of the birth of Richard Wilson (1714-1782), perhaps Wales’s greatest artist. Before Wilson, British artists painted the landscape to record its appearance. Wilson showed how landscape paintings could have layers of meaning and convey mood and emotions too.
Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows
National Museum Cardiff – 7th March – 7th September
Constable’s famous painting will be on loan to the museum from the Tate Gallery for six months. The display and a series of related events are supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Art Fund.
Artes Mundi 6 Exhibition
National Museum Cardiff, Chapter, and other Cardiff locations – from 25th October
The Artes Mundi 6 Prize will be awarded on the 22nd January 2015. Ten artists from eight countries have been shortlisted coming from the UK, USA, Portugal, Israel, Croatia, Iceland, Brazil and
the Netherlands. The winner will be announced in 2015 and receive £40,000.
A Dark Cloud over the woollen industry
National Wool Museum – September
The National Wool Museum will look at the desperation of the woollen mills for contracts to keep the mills open, and the use of Welsh national identity for recruitment.
Welsh Industry and the Great War
National Waterfront Museum – Autumn 2014
Examines the huge impact the First World War made on Welsh industry, and the contribution of Welsh industry to Britain’s war effort.
National Portrait Gallery
First World War Centenery
From February 2014
This exhibition will be the first of the First World War Centenery exhibitions to open. It will include 80 paintings plus photographs, sculpture, films and drawings showing the human experience of war. It includes portraits of Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, Edith Cavell, Mata Hari and Winston Churchill. Works by Beckman, Kirchner, Orpen, Tonks, Rosenberg and Epstein are included.
Natural History Museum
Britain: one million years of the human story
Until 28th September
Travel back in time and experience the dramatic story of prehistoric Britain, its changing landscapes and the people that lived here. Find out how Britain looked long before the Romans, Saxons and Vikings arrived, and discover rarely seen specimens from behind the scenes, brought to life using the latest scientific techniques.
Mammoths: Ice Age Giants
23rd May – 7th September
This exhibition explores the lives of some of the largest creatures ever to walk the earth. It features life size models of mammoths as well as huge fossils. Tusk jousting, trunk moving and feeling the weight of the hundreds of kg of food mammoths ate each day will help visitors imagine a mammothy world. The exhibition will also research causes of mammoth extinction, and ways to protect their modern relative, the elephant.
Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2014
Opening October 2014
Celebrating its fiftieth anniversary in 2014, Wildlife Photographer of the Year continues to reveal nature photography in its purest form. Expect special commissions and commemorative activity in this milestone year.
Butterflies
March - September
Visitors will be able to walk among hundreds of free-flying tropical butterflies in this ‘live’ exhibition.
Museum of London
Sherlock Holmes
17th October 2014 – 22nd February 2015
Delve into the brain of one of the most famous fictional Londoners of all time. Ever since his creation by Arthur Conan Doyle in late-Victorian London, Sherlock Holmes has continued to enthral his readers and audiences. Our major 2014 exhibition will ask; who is Sherlock Holmes, and why does he endure?
Made in London: Jewellery now
21st November 2013 – 27th April 2014
London serves as a training ground, workshop, market place and inspiration to a large number of jewellery makers. Made in London: Jewellery Now explores the creations and unique vision of the most talented designers based in the capital today.
National Museums Scotland
Mammoths of the Ice Age
24th January – 20th April 2014
Explores what life was like for the iconic mammals of the Ice Age; the mammoth and the mastodon. An extensive collection of objects from the era will be brought together for the first time in the UK, from some of the oldest human art in existence to woolly mammoth hair, preserved mammoth dung and a replica of Lyuba, the 40,000-year old baby mammoth. Found in 2007 in the frozen wastes of Russia, she is the best-preserved mammoth ever discovered.
Ming: The Golden Empire
27th June – 19th October 2014
Explores the remarkable achievements of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) which was marked
by a dramatic flourishing of the arts. From iconic blue and white porcelain to sumptuous silk textiles, gold and jades, rare examples of elaborately enamelled cloisonné, and detailed calligraphy, a collection of original Ming artefacts, including many Chinese National Treasures, will be on display.
Common Cause: Commonwealth Scots and the Great War
11th July – 12th October 2014
Explore the complex relationship between Scottish identity and the emerging national identities of the former British Empire in this exhibition, commemorating the centenary of the First World War. In 1914, as the world prepared for war, thousands of men enlisted in Scotland. But thousands more Scots, and those of Scottish descent, joined up across the world.
Norwich Museums
The Wonder of Birds
Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery – 24th May – 14th September
Eliciting a wide range of emotions from awe to fear, from pleasure to cruelty, birds have intrigued humanity since the earliest of times. The exhibition will span the centuries and will include the arts, natural history, archaeology, fashion and social history, with loans from local and national collections. Some 220 works by major artists and illustrators, historical and contemporary, will be on show.
Oxford University Museums
Cézanne and the Modern: Masterpieces of European Art from the Pearlman Collection
Ashmolean – 13th March - 22nd June
The collection formed by Henry and Rose Pearlman after the Second World War is one of the most important in North America. In 2014, it will be exhibited for the first time in Europe at the Ashmolean Museum.
Discovering Tutankhamun
24th July – 26th October
Howard Carter’s excavation of the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922 was one of the most significant archaeological discoveries of the 20th century.
VERVE Artist Residency
The Pitt Rivers Museum, throughout 2014
Composer and musician Nathaniel Mann, will take up the inaugural VERVE Artist Residency in 2014. Using new techniques to engage with sometimes overlooked aspects of the collections, Nathaniel will explore, discuss and develop his creative processes with the help of the public. Workshops and presentations will encourage visitors to open their ears to the collections in the Museum and participants will be invited to respond creatively to artefacts and sounds. The residency will culminate in a public performance installation on Saturday 22 March, 2014.
Oxford University Museum of Natural History Re-opening
15th February 2014
The Oxford University Museum of Natural History reopens to the public following a year’s closure for repairs to its magnificent glass-tiled roof. Subsequently, the museum will run a re-emergence programme of high-profile speakers and other special events.
One of these will be the Museum’s participation in Reactions, a week-long festival exploring science and the arts, running from 15th – 23rd March across the Oxford University Museums and Collection. As part of Reactions, Marcus du Sautoy, Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, will be giving a public lecture at the Museum on Monday 17th March.
Crystals: Beauty, Science, Structure
Museum of the History of Science – 7th November – 30th March
From gigantic and exotic cave formations to everyday ingredients such as salt and sugar, crystals are all around us. Crystals: Beauty, Science, Structure looks at the history of the study of crystals, an exploration which has prized their mysterious and natural beauty, as well as probed their fundamental atomic structures.
Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter
West Country to World’s End: The South West in the Tudor Age
26th October – 2nd March 2014
RAMM is celebrating the spirit of adventure and enterprise of South West people in a landmark exhibition exploring the West Country in the age of the Tudors. Comprising loans from the Bodleian Library, British
Library, British Museum, National Portrait Gallery, National Trust, Royal Collection, Royal Museums Greenwich, Victoria & Albert Museum and private lenders, it will present a compelling account of the remarkable contributions of individuals from the South West from 1540 to 1620.
Intimate Worlds: exploring sexuality through the Sir Henry Wellcome Collection
5th April – 29th June 2014
Objects from the Wellcome Collection relating to human sexuality in all its forms: The variety of attitudes and cultural practices embodied by this display prompts us to question our own attitudes to contemporary issues such as censorship and display, the boundaries between childhood and adulthood, control of sexuality, fertility and contraception, pleasure and power relations.
Detached and Timeless: Contemporary Artists inspired by nature and spirit of place
12th July – 2nd November
Featuring some of the most significant figures in British art from the past 60 years, including David Bomberg, Edward Burra, Prunella Clough, Terry Frost, Patrick Heron, Roger Hilton, Peter Lanyon, Richard Long, Rachel Lowe, George Shaw and Clare Woods, this exhibition looks at the way modern artists have been inspired by landscapes, nature and the seasons. ‘Detached & Timeless’ has been originated especially for RAMM in collaboration with the Arts Council Collection on the Southbank, with
loans from Plymouth City Museum & Art Gallery.
Royal Museums Greenwich
Longitude Punk’d
Royal Observatory Greenwich - Opening Easter 2014
Royal Museums Greenwich has commissioned eight British steampunk artists to create works inspired by the technical inventions that were presented to the Board of Longitude between 1714
and 1828. The exhibition features both fantastical inventions and real historic objects - blurring the boundaries between art and science, fiction and fact. Longitude Punk'd includes specially created pieces by steampunk luminaries Robert Rankin, Herr Döktor, Dr Geof, Emily Ladybird, Major Thaddeus Tinker, Lady Elsie, Yomi Ayeni and Wyn Griffiths.
Rozanne Hawksley: War and Memory
Queen’s House May – November
Rozanne Hawksley is regarded as one of the UK's great textile art innovators. The installation features new work alongside pieces from throughout Hawksley's acclaimed career including
Seamstress and the Sea which refers to the artist's maternal grandmother - a widow who sewed sailor's collars for a living from the First World War until her death during World War Two.
War Artists at Sea
Queen’s House – Feb 2014 – Feb 2015
Showcasing the very best of Royal Museums Greenwich's collection of First and Second World War art, this new display includes visually arresting and moving portraits, battle scenes, and depictions of
everyday life during conflict. Charged with the task of revealing a 'truth' that went beyond the simple recording of events, official war art served the purposes of commemoration, instruction, documentation and propaganda as well as raising morale at home and at the front.
Forgotten Fighters: The First World War at Sea
National Maritime Museum - From August 2014
As part of the National Maritime Museum's commemoration of World War One this new gallery explores the naval and maritime dimensions of that conflict. The horrors of the Western Front have long dominated our understanding of those years, and yet the war at sea was fought on an
epic scale and with terrible human loss. Foregrounding personal stories, it takes visitors from the heroism of merchant mariners to the shattering realities of naval battle, and from the
Falkland Islands and the Mediterranean to the Atlantic and the North Sea.
The Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove
Exhibitions across Brighton in 2014 focus on the WW1 centenary. At the outbreak of war in August, the towns remained largely unaffected, with the holiday season in full swing. However, within a month, refugee families fleeing from Belgium and wounded soldiers from the Western Front were beginning to arrive. Schools, workhouses and even the Royal Pavilion, a former palace, were quickly turned into military hospitals and organisations such as the Refugee Committee were set up.
War Stories: Voices from the First World War
Brighton Museum & Art Gallery – 12th July 2014 – 1st March 2015
A major exhibition bringing to life the wartime experiences of twelve individuals whose intensely personal memories and extraordinary stories reveal the impact of war. They range from soldiers to nurses and conscientious objectors. Personal letters, diaries, art, photography, costume, film and memorabilia powerfully evoke the period.
Dr Brighton’s War: Hospitals and Healing in Brighton during WW1
Brighton Seafront – 9th July -31st August 2014
‘Doctor Brighton’ was a hospital city where wounded soldiers were sent to recover in healthy ‘Sussex by the Sea’ before being sent back to their regiments or discharged into civilian life. This pictorial exhibition on Brighton seafront tells how Brighton [and Hove] was transformed by the presence of the many military hospitals required to treat the increasing number of casualties returning from the Front.
Steeplechasing Shell Holes: A Young Man’s War
Preston Manor - April 2014 - 30th September 2014
Vere Benett-Stanford, heir to Preston Manor, served in the Royal Field Artillery during World War I. This fascinating display of personal archive material, photographs, letters and medals reveals a glimpse into his experiences of war in France.
Royal Pavilion Estate and Brighton Dome and Festival
May 2015
A collaboration between the Royal Pavilion & Museums and Brighton Dome and Festival, to create a unique series of performances and engagement opportunities, responding to the experience of the Indian soldiers as they recuperated in Brighton. There will also be an exhibition on the Indian soldiers at the Royal Pavillion.
Turner Contemporary
Making Painting: Helen Frankenthaler and J MW Turner
From 25th January 2014
This exhibition followed by a series of talks and performances. The White Cube’s Director of exhibitions and popular TV presenter Tim Marlow is joined by a host of experts, including Elizabeth Smith and John Elderfield, for a discussion on the work and practice of Helen Frankenthaler.
Science Museum Group
Landscape Photographer of the Year: Lines in the Landscape
National Railway Museum, York - until 5th May
Railways and photography have always had a connection and this year the National Railway Museum is hosting the finalists of the 'Lines in the Landscape' competition. This exhibition depicts the speed and momentum of the railways against stunning landscapes.
Open for Business
National Railway Museum - 16th May- 7th September
'Open for Business' is a major touring photographic exhibition which reveals the untold story of British manufacturing and industry through the lens of some of the world's greatest photographers. Photographic commissions reflecting Britain's changing industrial heritage take place at nine different sites between January 2014 and September 2015. Magnum photographer Mark Power's stunning shots of Bombardier in Derby and Holdsworth Fabrics in Huddersfield demonstrate the UK's transport industry is still thriving, showing the manufacture of carriages and their interiors in fascinating detail.
Information Age
Science Museum
A new £15.6m permanent gallery that will use sophisticated interactive displays and engaging participative experiences to reveal personal stories about how our lives have been transformed by communication innovations over the last 200 years.
The gallery will occupy the largest exhibition space in the Museum, and feature hundreds of unique objects from the Science Museum’s world class collections, many of which have never been seen before. Rare exhibits will include the extremely sensitive instruments which detected the first transatlantic telegraph messages in 1858, the BBC’s first radio transmitter 2LO, and a BESM-6, the only Russian supercomputer in a museum collection in the West.
Cosmonauts
Science Museum - Nov 2014 – April 2015
The most significant collection of space artefacts ever to leave Russia will be the centrepiece of a landmark new exhibition at the Science Museum, opening in November 2014.
‘Cosmonauts’ will explore the remarkable story of Russian scientific and technological ingenuity that kick-started the space age. Amongst the star objects on display will be real, cosmonaut-flown spacecraft, pioneering rocket engines, space suits and other life support systems.
There will also be examples of the personal and poignant - memorabilia belonging to some of the biggest names in spaceflight.
The exhibition will be the headline attraction of the 2014 UK-Russia Year of Culture, a year-long programme of events that will celebrate the rich cultural heritage of both countries. ‘Cosmonauts’ represents a major collaboration between the Moscow State Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics and the Federal Space Agency, Roscosmos. It draws on the support of many institutions and individuals in the UK and Russia to bring together a unique collection of space artefacts, many of which have never been seen outside Russia.
Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery
Mechanical Circus
15th February – 1st June
An interactive exhibition of historical and contemporary automata. A circus style exhibition combining modern mechanical sculptures with centuries old physics games and puzzles to prove that science and technology are alive and absorbing. Many objects are borrowed from Museum Boerhaave, the Netherlands State Museum of Science and Medicine.
Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums
The Late Shows 2014
Across NewcastleGateshead 16th – 17th May
The North East's legendary culture crawl The Late Shows returns to cultural venues across Newcastle and Gateshead which will be open until 11pm, offering a range of free events,
exhibitions and performances. Venues taking part will include museums,
galleries, art collectives, heritage sites and hidden gems, all listed on www.thelateshows.org.uk
Marilyn Monroe: A British Love Affair
Hatton Gallery 25th January – 18th May
The exhibition focuses on photographs and magazine covers from 1947 to 1962 that celebrate the transformation of the world's most popular pin-up to acclaimed actress, highlighting the British photographers and personalities who admired her and worked with her.
What's Your Story
South Shields Museum & Art Gallery - until 28th June
Tales of love, tragedy and rags to riches from families across South Tyneside and the North East region. Be inspired and embark on your own personal family history quest.
WW1 on North Tyneside
31st July – 26th April 2015
Commemorating the 100th anniversary of the start of the Great War, this exhibition explores the industry of North Tyneside during WW1 with a focus on the shipbuilding which took place next door to the museum at Swan Hunter's shipyard. Many of Britain's greatest warships were built there and fought during WW1.
Matthew Darbyshire: Oak Effect
Shipley Art Gallery 25th January – 17th May
Matthew Darbyshire presents a fictional domestic interior which forms a framework to house a collection of wooden artefacts from the Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums collections. Oak Effect situates original artefacts within a generic contemporary landscape and forms an immersive pedestal on which the artefacts are presented. A collaboration between Bloomberg SPACE and Tramway Glasgow.
V&A
Disobedient Objects
26th July 2014 – 1st February 2015
From Suffragette teapots to protest robots, this exhibition will be the first to examine the powerful role of objects in movements for social change. It will demonstrate how political activism drives a wealth of design ingenuity and collective creativity that defy standard definitions of art and design. It covers the period from 1980 to the present, a time that has brought new technologies and political challenges. On display will be arts of rebellion from around the world that illuminate the role of making in grassroots movements for social change: finely woven banners; defaced currency; changing designs for barricades and blockades; political videogames; an inflatable general assembly to facilitate consensus decision-making; experimental activist-bicycles; and textiles bearing witness to political murders.
Wedding Dress 1775-2014
3rd May 2014 – 15th March 2015
Tracing the development of the fashionable white wedding dress and its treatment by key fashion designers over the last two centuries, including work by Charles Frederick Worth, Norman Hartnell, Charles James, John Galliano, Christian Lacroix, Vivienne Westwood and Vera Wang. It will show the most romantic, glamorous and extravagant wedding dresses from the V&A’s collection as well as loans including the purple dress worn by Dita Von Teese for her marriage to Marilyn Manson and the outfits worn by Gwen Steffani and Gavin Rossdale on their wedding day.
The Glamour of Italian Fashion 1945-2014
5th April – 27th July 2014
The first major exhibition to explore Italy’s rich contribution to modern fashion from the end of the Second World War to the present.
Constable: The Making of a Master
20th September 2014 – 11th January 2015
This exhibition will reveal the hidden stories of how Constable created some of his most loved and well-known paintings.
Europe 1600-1800 Galleries Open
December 2014
A complete redesign and redisplay of seven galleries containing some of the most magnificent and elaborate works of art and design in the V&A collections. On display will be spectacular examples of textiles and fashion, painting and sculpture, ceramics and glass, furniture and metalwork, prints and books created by Europe’s finest artists and craftsmen of the 17th and 18th centuries
Daydreams and Diaries: The Story of Jacqueline Wilson
Museum of Childhood - 5th April – 2nd November 2014
Jacqueline Wilson has written over 100 books, translated into 34 different languages and is dearly loved by millions of fans around the world. This exhibition will explore Wilson’s contribution to children’s literature. On display will be original notebooks and extracts from some of her favourite books including The Story of Tracy Beaker.
The Wallace Collection
The Global City: On the streets of Renaissance Lisbon
6th November 2014 – 15th February 2015
This will be the first exhibition in Britain to focus on Renaissance Portugal and its pivotal role as a centre for global trade. Sixteenth-century Lisbon was an import-free port: an initial stopping point where ships traded their cargo to avoid continuing on long trading routes. The city was a unique destination for luxury goods, and was the culturally diverse and cosmopolitan centre of early modern Europe. This exhibition will highlight the cross-cultural influences between Lisbon, Africa, Asia and the Far East, and celebrate Lisbon’s position as the first true ‘global city’.
The Great Gallery Reopens
September 2014
The Great Gallery houses one of the finest collections of Old Master paintings in the world and has been described as “the greatest picture gallery in Europe.” On 19 September, following a two year refurbishment to bring in more light without harming the paintings, it will reopen with a new hang.
York Museums Trust
1914 exhibition
York Castle Museum - Opens 28th June
This exhibition will explore the terror of total war and how it revolutionised life a century ago. From the pre-war golden age of peace and prosperity visitors will be sent to the recruitment office and travel via train to the horrors of the frontline - from rats to foot rot, shell shock to gas warfare. Back home, daily life in Britain was changing beyond recognition while around the world millions would die as Europe's empires clashed in the firsttruly global conflict.
New technology and research will be combined with the museum's extensive military, costume and social history collections to tell the story of Yorkshire people in WW1. It’s the centrepiece of a £1.7m project at the museum, funded by the HLF.
Aesthetica Art Prize 2014
York St Mary's – 4th April – 22nd June
The Aesthetica Art Prize returns to York St Marys in a celebration of outstanding contemporary art. Juxtaposing the historic with the contemporary, the Art Prize transforms the enchanting medieval venue, uniting it with a diverse display of unique modern works.
The Madsen Commissions
York St Mary’s 4th July – 2nd November
An exhibition by contemporary artists inspired by and responding to the collections of Peter Emil Madsen, the generous benefactor who donated more than £2 million to the £8 million development of York Art Gallery. Madsen gave the gallery full control of his extensive and eclectic collection of fine art, books, prints and small sculpture, with several items being acquisitioned into the gallery's collection. York Art Gallery will reopen in spring 2015.