Celebrate 125 years of Museums Journal with 25% off all new memberships this weekend

Call for ‘national treasure’ protections to cover natural history specimens

News

Revamped Wrexham Museum gets opening date

News

Andy Burnham urged to act on ‘escalating crisis’ facing glass heritage

News

‘Growing use of force’: Museums warned of rise in violent heists

News
Black and white photo of Londons Barbican Estate, with three tall residential towers, the Museum of London in front, and modern office buildings surrounding the area.

The boom years | Museums Journal, 1960-2000

Rebecca Atkinson looks at how Museums Journal evolved in the postwar years of the 1960s right up to the millennium

MGS reports growth in grantmaking, sector reach and climate action

Annual review highlights funding uplift after first year of Museum Futures programme

New Royal Marines Experience set to open in October

The £15m development will be unveiled at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard

Workers at V&A’s London sites to take strike action next month

Dispute continues over pay, working conditions and heatwave policy

Museums and galleries urged to prepare for stricter EU packaging rules

New law will bring big changes to how UK institutions operate in Europe

Advertisement

Financial resilience doesn’t happen by accident

Institutions can stabilise their income by integrating commercial thinking into their core decision-making and programming

All that glitters: Is the Treasure scheme losing some of its shine? 

There is some disquiet about the system’s current direction of travel, despite record numbers of finds in recent years

Emergency fundraising campaigns offer museums a lifeline

The sector is increasingly turning to short-term campaigns when in urgent need of money – but this approach must be used sparingly

Digital detox: Is social media still worth it for museums?

The online landscape suddenly looks very different amid a backlash against tech giants. Geraldine Kendall Adams asks how museums are adapting to the post-X era

Profile image for Tarun Nagesh

Listening to rising voices

Tarun Nagesh on an exhibition that showcases the diversity of contemporary art from the Asia-Pacific region

Profile image for Aysha Afridi

ACE’s renewed emphasis on excellence will play to the strengths of museums

The sector will have more space to emphasise its unique qualities in the next funding round, says Aysha Afridi

Profile image for Laura Pye

Getting to grips with our collections

Museums must commit to 100% inventory-level documentation ahead of their next NPO applications, says Laura Pye

Profile image for Eleanor Mills

The difficulties of redeveloping much-loved local authority museums

Ipswich Museum’s restoration and redevelopment promises to strike exactly the right balance between nostalgia and the 21st century, says Eleanor Mills

Profile image for Sheena Barrett

Art has the capacity to help world repair

IMMA project considers art as a lens to look at peace, says Sheena Barrett

Profile image for Junyi Lin

Knowing who visited is not the same as knowing what they learned

Education teams need evidence that matches the decisions they are trying to make, writes Junyi Lin

In practice

Case study | Addressing colonial histories

Ingrid Lewis shares how an international partnership is linking Derbyshire’s cotton mills to the island of Carriacou

Spotlight | Running successful events

A vibrant and relevant events programme is a crucial way to bring in audiences and raise income – so what’s the secret to success?

Guide | Planning seasonal events

Tapping into key seasonal moments can help boost your events programme

Guide | Museum lates

Caroline Parry explores different models for after-hours events

Case study | Programming with the community

Heba Abd el Gawad shares lessons from a community takeover of Horniman

Case study | Building stakeholder engagement

Emily Ding shares how events are a key part of the Canal & River Trust’s fundraising strategy  

Advertisement

Black and white photo of Londons Barbican Estate, with three tall residential towers, the Museum of London in front, and modern office buildings surrounding the area.

The boom years | Museums Journal, 1960-2000

Rebecca Atkinson looks at how Museums Journal evolved in the postwar years of the 1960s right up to the millennium

‘We needed a building that could be a safe space for everyone’: A museum shaped by the Troubles

Geraldine Kendall Adams visits a border museum in the Republic of Ireland that has brought healing to a divided community 

A thousand years in the making: The Bayeux Tapestry loan

Geraldine Kendall Adams unpicks the logistics of moving the fragile embroidery from France to England for a historic exhibition at the British Museum

‘Power has shifted’: Northern Ireland’s community-led museums

A growing number of heritage projects are allowing local people to explore and share their own stories rather than having others speak for them. By Simon Stephens

‘It puts the humanity back into the objects’: How craft is remaking collections

Many museums are harnessing the power of contemporary craft by inviting artists to take inspiration from their collections, says Corinne Julius

Q&A | ‘The disability rights movement is presumed to have been small and niche, but it was huge’ 

David Hevey tells us about a new digital archive dedicated to the civil rights struggle that Britain forgot

Working life | ‘I’m passionate about exploring all sides of the criminal justice system’

Simon Tansley, the director of London’s Bow Street Museum of Crime and Justice, discusses a project inspired by the writer Oscar Wilde

Profile | ‘I don’t have a typical museum background – I’m really proud of getting to where I have’

For someone who never expected to work in the sector, Helen Hartstein now has her dream job at Exeter’s Royal Albert Memorial Museum

Q&A | ‘If you’re going to attract funders, you’ve got to have a big, bold ambition’

As a new SS Great Britain museum opens, CEO Andrew Edwards talks to us about his wider plans for dockyard site – and how he dealt with a media backlash against its new name

Q&A | ‘Building meaningful participatory projects takes time, trust and investment’

Ameneh Enayat tells us how young people played a central role in creating the Story Museum's new immersive detective exhibition

Q&A | ‘I don’t think I ever thought we could ask to borrow The Hay Wain’

Emma Roodhouse, curator of Walking Constable’s Landscape, talks about the enduring quality of the artist’s work in the year that marks the 250th anniversary of John Constable’s birth

Reframing the value of living heritage – Un/Common People: Folk Culture in Wessex

This exhibition at Salisbury Museum takes a modern approach to celebrating the rich cultural traditions of rural England

Field of vision | Sheep Field Barn, Henry Moore Studios & Gardens, Perry Green, Much Hadham, Hertfordshire

The exhibition space of this world-famous sculptor has been sympathetically upgraded to embrace a more inclusive, educational environment

A fascinating model for temporary exhibitions – Genghis Khan: How the Mongols Changed the World

Rebecca Atkinson is impressed by a show at the Royal Armouries that makes the world-shaping Mongol emperor relevant to British audiences

Digital | Moving paintings, fashion history, whaler’s memories

We take a close look at the cache

Advertisement

Watch and listen

Radical Museums | S3E4: Nelson Cummins

Simon Stephens travels to Glasgow to meet Nelson Cummins, curator of legacies of slavery and empire at Glasgow Museums

Radical Museums | S3E3: Marian Gwyn

Sharon Heal speaks to Marian Gwyn, whose transformative initiative has worked to diversify and decolonise local museums in Wales

Radical Museums | S3E2: E-J Scott

Simon Stephens travels to south London to interview E-J Scott, founder of the Museum of Transology

Radical Museums | S3E1: William Mitchell

Sharon Heal meets William Mitchell, project director for the Action for Community Transformation (ACT) Initiative in Belfast

Radical Museums | S2E4: Agrippa Njanina

Sharon Heal travels to Belfast to meet Agrippa Njanina, a community engagement officer at National Museums Northern Ireland

Radical Museums | S2E3: Ken Paranada

Simon Stephens meets Ken Paranada, the curator of art and climate change at the Sainsbury Centre

Radical Museums | S2E2: Jane Henderson

Sharon Heal meets Jane Henderson, a professor of conservation at Cardiff University

Radical Museums | S2E1: Leonie Bell

Simon Stephens meets Leonie Bell, the director of V&A Dundee

Europe after empire

Europe after empire

Gary Younge introduces a series of articles that explore how decolonisation is being approached in European museums

‘Return the bones. Empty the museums’

Museums need to address the issue of the ancestral remains in their collections with transparency, openness and accountability, argues Dan Hicks

A whole new world

The Wereldmuseum Amsterdam has been working with artists and other creative practitioners to explore the impact of Dutch imperialism, but Carol Ann Dixon says more needs to be done to empower its own staff to contribute to meaningful change at the organisation

Representations of Blackness at Vienna’s Belvedere Museum

How Tayla Myree is bringing a much-neglected discussion to the public with her tour exploring Black iconography in the museum's artwork

What’s in a name?

Tracing ancestry through a surname uncovered a complex history shared by many, writes Rachel Ama Asaa Engmann

Profile | ‘I’ve been to prison several times. It’s no big deal’

Our guest editor Gary Younge meets restitution activist Mwazulu Diyabanza, who explains why he is taking the law into his own hands

We are committed to publishing accurate, engaging, challenging and constructive content on the issues, ideas, debates and practices that help museums serve the public better.

Advertisement