Museums and galleries

Paisley Museum will undergo a £42m transformation beginning in 2020 after plans were approved by Renfrewshire Council.

The Category A-listed Victorian building is being upgraded to help it tell the stories of a town known around the world for its pattern.

The museum is expected to draw audiences of 125,000 people a year - almost four times current numbers - from Scotland, the rest of the UK and internationally when it is due to reopen in 2022.

The designs have been produced by AL_A, a company headed by by Stirling Prize winner Amanda Levete.

The Design Museum will open the first-ever major museum exhibition of Prada design and innovation in September 2020. 

Prada: Front and Back will "offer unprecedented insight into Prada’s creative approach, inspirations and landmark collaborations". It will reflect the idea of "front and back" through looking at the surface of the fashion house's work while also highlighting the "creative and industrial infrastructure" behind it all.

It will tell Miuccia Prada’s story through it's products and success in both design and business, evolving the very idea of style and culture.

Glasgow has been named the UK’s top cultural and creative city in 2019 as part of a landmark report by the European Commission.

The report puts Glasgow at the top of the UK list above London, Bristol, Brighton and Manchester in the top five. Edinburgh is ranked 6th on the list. The report also ranked Glasgow as Europe’s leader for ‘openness, tolerance and trust’.

In 2018/19, the total income of Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) funded cultural organisations was £3.7 billion, similar to 2017/18. Read the full report here.

Of this:

With World Cup Rugby at fever pitch for England fans, all eyes are on Japan for its upcoming sports and cultural events. British Council is leading on the UK in JAPAN 19–20 season, a year-long programme of cultural and education-focused events and activities in both Japan and the UK which provides opportunities for British and Japanese organisations.

The Jewish Museum London has won the Museums Change Lives Award, given by the Museums Association, for their exhibition 'Jews, Money, Myth'.

The judges determined that the exhibition was “brave, fascinating and timely”, based on ground-breaking new research as well as community engagement. 

More people visited DCMS-sponsored British museums and galleries in 2018 than ever since records began 15 years ago.

Almost 50 million people were recorded as having visited a DCMS-sponsored museum and gallery last year, a 5.5 per cent increase on 2017/18.

There was also an 11 per cent jump in visitors to museums and galleries otuside of London in the same period, partially attributed to National Museums Liverpool's 20 per cent rise in visitors with the success of the China's First Emperor and the Terracotta Warriors exhibition.

Atom Gallery has invited over 40 artists to produce an original artwork on empty pizza boxes for an exhibition to raise much needed funds for Hackney Foodbank. A wide variety of artists from London's urban and street art scenes (and some from further afield...) will be spraying, painting, printing and drawing on pizza boxes supplied by local pizza companies.

The Science museum is collaborating with Tate, National Gallery, V&A, National Muiseums Scotland, the Estorick Collection and more to create a new exhibition examining the Art of Innovation.

On Saturday 7 September Waddesdon opened a new permanent gallery, 'A Rothschild Treasury'.

The gallery houses more than 300 objects made from rare and precious materials, many on display for the first time.

From a 1st-century cameo of Augustus Caesar’s grandson, to a microscope used by entomologist and flea expert Charles Rothschild, via jewellery given as presents from Queen Victoria, to objects bearing Nazi inventory numbers, gold boxes, silver and jewellery – this new  gallery displays items that celebrate the Rothschild family as collectors of extraordinary objects.