Museums and galleries

Construction has begun on East Bank, a new cultural district located in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, which will cost £1.1 billion.

The new district, planned for a 2022 opening, will contain a new dance theatre for Sadler's Wells, a venue for the V&A, a new home for the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus plus the BBC Singers, and a new campus for University College London, and the London College of Fashion (part of the University of the Arts London).

Siobhan Davies Dance (London) and BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art (Gateshead) are pleased to announce the expansion of their four-year partnership, CONTINUOUS, to form the CONTINUOUS Network which will incorporate institutions around the country. This major collaboration has been awarded an Arts Council England National Lottery Project Grant for £341,144 and £90,000 in support from the John Ellerman Foundation.

Art Fund membership has grown by 8.5% in the past 12 months to 151,000 members, which has doubled in the last decade.

Art Fund has also launched a new funding scheme to help toward the conservation of museum and gallery collections in the UK with applications opening on 28 July 2019. This new fund joins several others opened in 2019:

For 2019 Shubbak has commissioned a number of mobile installations for different locations across London.

Bricklab, the designers of the first Saudi pavilion at Venice Architecture Biennale create a new pop-up sculpture especially for Shubbak. 22 brightly coloured units equalling in number the 22 states of the Arab League are arranged in different constellations to offer new viewpoints of geographies, nations and the power to imagine other realities. No unit can stand on its own, but has to be grafted onto others.

The 17th annual London Design Festival takes place 14–22 September 2019 at V&A where curated collections of displays and installations and the Global Design Forum will showcase innovative, breathtaking British design. Various locations in the city will also play host to signature projects.

Design Districts, Landmark Projects, Festival Commissions and other special projects are the key attractions throught the city and this year's are:

The European Commission will provide funding to new projects for creative and audiovisual institutions using digital and new technologies.

This funding will be available to consortiums of organisations from at least three countries participating in Creative Europe representing a diverse range of cultural and creative sectors, including audiovisual. 

With a pot of around 1.75 million Euros, the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency estimates funding for 6–10 projects at a minimum of 150,000 Euros for a maximum 60% of total eligible cost for the project.

Did you know that Waddesdon Manor houses an outstanding collection of Dutch paintings?

Waddesdon Manor asks “Have you got a Hodgkin at home?”

As part of its preparations for Brought to Life: Eliot Hodgkin Rediscovered (25 May – 20 October 2019) - the first major exhibition of the artist’s work in nearly thirty years – Waddesdon Manor and members of Hodgkin’s family are keen to trace ‘lost’ works by the British painter who very much deserves to be returned to the spotlight.

ArtFund has chosen its five nominees for Museum of the Year 2019, including one from each of the devolved nations. The winner will receive £100,000.

The nominees are:

• HMS Caroline, Belfast
• Nottingham Contemporary
• Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford
• St Fagan's National Museum of History, Cardiff
• V&A Dundee

Read more about each of the nominees here.

Dundee has benefitted from Scotland's first museum of design, V&A Dundee, since its opening in September 2018 with a boost in visitor numbers.

V&A Dundee has welcomed more than 340,000 people in its first three months of operation. Other cultural venues in the area that have benefitted from the new musuem include:

Discovery Point – site of the Antarctic-exploring RSS Discovery ship and museum – saw its visitor numbers increase by 40 per cent in 2018

McManus Art Gallery & Museum saw a 31 per cent increase.