Opening this month

5 February-2 May

A showcase of works by Turner Prize-winning artist Simon Starling created in the last five years, including many previously unseen in the UK. It features video, film, slide projections, photography and sculpture, and includes Red Rivers and Long Ton, a sculpture featuring two suspended rough lumps of marble that have been precision-cut to have the same form.

There is also a video work from 2008 that draws parallels between a 19th-century anthropological expedition to the Congo and Starling’s own journey along the Hudson river in a handmade canoe. A site-specific installation has been commissioned as well. The show is a collaboration with the Contemporary Art Centre in Malaga.

Cost undisclosed
Main funders Tate Members, Tate St Ives Members, Simon Starling Exhibition Supporters Group, Henry Moore Foundation
Curator Martin Clark
Exhibition design in-house
Publicity Two Design

8 February-22 May

An exhibition tracing the history of one of the earliest human technologies, basketry, from the ancient world to the present day. The show aims to xplore the place of basketry in human society, economy and culture, using objects that demonstrate a broad range of weaving techniques and materials.

It features practical objects such as reed boats, shields from North East Congo, fish traps from Ghana and Egyptian shoes, alongside contemporary sculpture and design pieces by artists such as Laura Ellen Bacon, Wilfried Popp and Lois Walpole.

Cost £200,000
Main funders Arts & Humanities Research Council through the Beyond Text programme
Curator Sandy Heslop. Developed in collaboration with the school of world art studies and museology at the University of East Anglia.
Exhibition design and graphics George Sexton Associates

11 February-2 October

The most bizarre and little-known secrets of procreation in the natural world are uncovered in this exhibition. Visitors can discover the science behind sex in a display of more than 100 animal specimens from the museum collection, such as Guy, a large male gorilla donated by London Zoo, as well as BBC footage of wildlife engaging in outlandish mating rituals.

Live creatures will also appear, including a tank of stick insects that stay attached for several months after mating. Surprising facts, such as the barnacle’s ability to extend its penis to 30 times its own body length, are recounted as part of the exploration of diverse seduction and reproduction practices in the animal kingdom.
 
Cost about £400,000
Main funders in-house
Curated by interpretation team with input from museum scientists and experts with specialisms in animal and human sexual behaviour.
Exhibition design and graphics Easy Tiger Creative

12 February-2 April

The work of influential photographers such as Eve Arnold, Jane Bown, Fay Godwin, Lee Miller and Man Ray feature in this exhibition. Many of the photographs have a connection to Cornwall, including those taken by a group of surrealists during a visit in 1937.

The exhibition will particularly focus on the work of photographer Ian Stern, who joined the BBC aged 19 and worked for several years on the Man Alive documentaries, which covered social and political issues. Also known by his pseudonym Robert Ribeck, Stern died in 1978 aged 31, but is considered to have made a vital contribution to the art of documentary photography.

Falmouth Art Gallery director Brian Stewart planned and organised much of the exhibition before his death in December (see obituary, p59).

Cost £1,200
Main funders Heritage Lottery Fund and University College Falmouth, incorporating Dartington College
Curators Natalie Rigby, Donna Williams, Glen Freestone and Alex Hooper
Exhibition design and graphics Steve Collinson, Xgraphica

18 February-15 May

Collector David J Lewis has built up his extensive Schorr Collection of artworks over 35 years and is now showing some of his acquisitions in public. Covering the past five centuries, more than 60 works will be on display, from old master artists such as Rubens, El Greco, Delacroix and Cranach to impressionists including Pissarro and Sisley.

The exhibition also traces how a collection develops and how the taste of the collector can change over time. Highlights include Rubens’s Battle of the Amazons and Pissarro’s Pommiers dans une prairie.

Cost unavailable
Main funders National Museums Liverpool with private donations
Curator Xanthe Brooke
Exhibition design and graphics in-house design team

18 February-4 September

An exhibition showcasing the museum’s diverse collection of London street photographs from 1860 to 2010. Demonstrating how street photography has evolved over the years, yet always retained the crucial element of spontaneity, the exhibition offers a visual record of an ever-changing city and its inhabitants.
About 200 photographs will go on display, including work by well-known photographic pioneers such as John Thomson and Roger Mayne.

Cost £50,000
Funder Museum of London
Curators Mike Seaborne, Anna Sparham
Exhibition design Norton Allison

19 February-11 June

Seamarks such as beacons, buoys and lighthouses guide vessels along maritime channels and enable them to safely avoid hazardous areas. Seamarking navigational systems are vital for the safety of mariners across the world, and the intriguing story of the technology’s development is told in this joint collaboration between the Museum of Scottish Lighthouses, Fraserburgh, and the Aberdeen Maritime Museum.

Cost unavailable
Main funders Aberdeen Maritime Museum, Museum of Scottish Lighthouses
Curators Meredith Greiling, Virginia Mayes-Wright
Exhibition design and graphics in-house design team