Weston Loan Programme with Art Fund marks first decade

The Weston Loan Programme with Art Fund is supporting 15 exhibitions of loans from national and major lending museum collections as it celebrates its 10^th year.

The grant programme is designed to directly support smaller museums to borrow significant artefacts and works of art from national or major collections.

The scheme covers costs that are often beyond the reach of smaller institutions – including transport, installation, security and insurance – with the aim of enabling ambitious exhibitions to take place in communities across the country.

The Art Fund has revealed details of the exhibitions being supported by the programme in 2026.

Highlights include Wright of Derby: From the Shadows (13 June – 1 November 2026) at Derby Museum and Art Gallery, co-developed with the National Gallery. The show will bring Joseph Wright’s An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump (1768) to the painter’s hometown for the first time in 80 years, as part of the “year of Wright”.

Birkenhead’s Williamson Art Gallery will host Leonard McComb: Nature and Humanity , the biggest ever exhibition of the British artist’s work. The exhibition will include the largest drawing on paper held by any UK public collection, Oriel Môn’s Rock and Sea Anglesey, as well Manchester Art Gallery’s Portrait of a Young Man Standing (1963–83) and the Royal Academy’s Sgt. Bert Bowers (1991).

The Hold in Ipswich is to host Coven: Suffolk’s Dark Legacy of Witchcraft (16 October 2026 – 20 February 2027), which explores the 17th-century Suffolk witch trials, among the most brutal and widespread in England, with loans from Wellcome Collection and Tate alongside pieces from Suffolk Archives’ own collection.

Surrealism from Below (23 July – 10 October 2027) at Edinburgh’s Fruitmarket gallery will explore surrealism and dada through the lens of protest and activism with works from the collections of National Galleries of Scotland, including Joan Miró’s Aidez L’Espagne (Help Spain) (1937), André Breton’s Le déclin de la société bourgeoise (c.1935–40), and Sam Haile’s Non Payment of Taxes, Congo, Christian Era (1937).

Further exhibitions opening in 2026 include Constable: Walking the Landscape at Ipswich’s Christchurch Mansion (11 July – 4 October), which will bring the Suffolk-born artist’s The Hay Wain (1821) to the county it depicts for the first time, as well as the first opportunity to see Saxon artefacts excavated during HS2 works in Buckinghamshire in The Saxons, which recently opened at Discover Bucks Museum and runs until 1 November.

Funded by the Garfield Weston Foundation, the Weston Loan Programme with Art Fund has supported more than 100 exhibitions at over 120 venues across the UK to date, including several touring shows, and has provided over £2.2m of funding to regional museums and galleries.

“As we mark 10 years of the Weston Loan Programme, thanks to generous support from the Garfield Weston Foundation, we’ve seen what’s possible when museums come together to share their collections,” said Art Fund director Jenny Waldman.

“Communities and visitors to smaller museums across the UK have been able to see and enjoy remarkable works of art. From medieval manuscripts to Pre-Raphaelite masterpieces, this year’s projects bring extraordinary paintings and objects into new contexts, connecting more people with the stories our world-leading collections have to tell.”