Museums and heritage

A study looking at reviews, admissions fees, Instagram popularity and opening hours to determine which European museum is the best value has ranked the UK's National Gallery in first place.

The research, conducted by The Knowledge Academy, placed the National History Museum second. Both London museums hold a 4.5 star rating on Tripadvisor and offer free entry.

The Louvre in Paris was ranked third, while the British Museum, the other UK entry in the top 10, came sixth.

UK-based entries in the top 20 are the Victoria and Albert Museum (=11th), The Roman Baths in Bath (16th), Royal Yacht Britannia in Edinburgh (19th) and the Churchill War Rooms (20th).

The British Museum has settled a court case after acknowledging it used the work of a translator without permission or payment and then wrongly removed it.

Vancouver-based writer, poet and translator Yilin Wang agreed to settle her copyright infringement claim against the museum for an undisclosed sum.

Wang will also be fully credited in all exhibition materials and future copies of the catalogue will include her contribution.

According to the Art Newspaper, Wang plans to donate 50% or more of the total settlement “to support translators of Sinophone poetry”. 

“I hope my donations can help fund a series of workshops with a focus on feminist, queer and decolonial approaches to translation, in honour of Qiu Jin,” Wang said.

As part of the settlement, the British Museum will be reviewing its permissions policy.

A statement from the institution says the review of its permission process will “ensure that there is a timely and robust methodology underpinning our clearance work and our crediting of contributors going forward”.

The museum says it will complete its review by the end of this year and will “implement appropriate policies and procedures to address any gaps identified in its review”.

The statement also acknowledges the museum does not currently have a policy for specifically addressing the clearance of translations, which Wang said was “surprising” for such a large institution.

“I hope that the British Museum follows through on their commitment to create a clearance process for translations in the future by the end of this year and to take concrete steps to ensure that the mistake does not happen again,” Wang added.

More than 80 people from heritage, arts and climate backgrounds have written an open letter to the British Museum calling on it to remove BP’s name from its lecture theatre.

The move would send “a powerful message” about fossil fuel sponsorship, supporters said, calling on the museum’s director Hartwig Fischer to enact the change before he steps down next year.

Fischer announced the decision to resign his eight-year role last month, stating that he wanted to focus on the “rescue and preservation of cultural heritage in times of climate crisis, conflict, war and violence”, the Guardian reported.

The museum chose not to renew its 27-year sponsorship deal with the energy firm this year, stating that there were “no other contracts or agreements in effect between the museum and BP”.

Tate, National Portrait Gallery, Royal Shakespeare Company, Scottish Ballet and Royal Opera House have all ended funding partnerships with the company in recent years, to the approval of environmental campaigners.

Signatories calling on Fischer to change the name of the theatre include photographer Nan Goldin, climate scientist Bill McGuire, writer Gaia Vince, climate justice activist and mental health advocate Tori Tsui, the director of the Brunel Museum Katherine McAlpine and archaeologist and author David Wengrow.

“Just as cultural institutions around the world have removed the Sackler family name as evidence of the harmful ways their money was made came to light, the damning evidence of BP’s past – and present – can no longer be ignored,” they wrote to Fischer in a letter organised by Culture Unstained.

“Renaming the lecture theatre would send a powerful message about the future the museum wants to see… You would be demonstrating the kind of climate leadership that is now so urgently needed.”

The letter acknowledged that its writers welcomed the news that the museum’s existing sponsorship deal with BP had come to an end this year and urged Fischer to “pledge that the museum will accept no further funding from sponsors or donors involved in fossil fuel production”.

Art Fund is investing in programmes designed to support museums and galleries through touring and partnership working on exhibitions.

The Weston Loan Programme with Art Fund will continue for another three years following a £1m grant from the Garfield Weston Foundation, taking the partnership to its 10th anniversary in 2027. 

The scheme enables smaller museums to borrow significant works from major collections.

Meanwhile, a new UK-wide programme that will engage and involve underrepresented audiences with museum collections through touring exhibitions, Going Places, is launching its first phase this month.

The scheme will establish five networks of three to five small to mid-sized museums, with each network developing bespoke touring exhibitions.

The initiative will sit alongside other Art Fund-supported initiatives such as ARTIST ROOMS, which presents the work of high-profile international artists in solo exhibitions drawn from a national touring collection jointly owned by Tate and National Galleries of Scotland.

“Through our growing range of support for collaborative initiatives, Art Fund recognises the value of touring and sharing collections as one of the most inclusive and sustainable ways of bringing art to new audiences,” Director Jenny Waldman said.

Historical ‘dress up’ costumes aimed at adult visitors are due to be introduced at 11 English Heritage sites this summer.

The move is in response to research commissioned by the charity and conducted by the University of Kent that found adults have more active imaginations than children.

The study “directly refutes the commonly held belief that we become less imaginative as we get older”, the charity said.

Researchers from the university’s School of Psychology asked more than 470 people aged between four and 81 to imagine how unfamiliar historical objects could have been used. 

The answers were assessed based on characteristics including the number of unique responses and how close the guesses were to the object’s actual function.

As age increased, people were more likely to imagine uses that were closer to the actual function of the objects, but they were also more likely to give original answers and to provide more detail.

Meanwhile, adolescents and young adults came up with a larger number of suggestions spanning a wider range of categories than other age groups, suggesting that different age groups have different imaginative strengths, researchers said.

The research “shows that our imaginations continue to grow and change, even throughout adulthood, with the over 60s actually showing the most originality,” said Dr Angela Nyhout, Assistant Professor at the University of Kent’s School of Psychology, who led the research team.

“Adults’ imaginations can be just as vivid as children’s, but what they already know about the world constrains their imagination in some cases and enhances it in others. We just need the freedom of the right environment and opportunity to explore the limits of our imagination, and historical places are a perfect place to do this.”

English Heritage has used these findings to inform its One Extraordinary Summer events programme, for which it will introduce both hands-on history sessions and historical adult dress-up opportunities, with costumes including Roman togas, Medieval chainmail, Victorian suits and Tudor gowns, as well as WWII uniforms. 

At Whitby Abbey in Yorkshire, which inspired Bram Stoker’s Dracula, adult visitors will be invited to don vampire capes and accessories.

The 11 sites offering the costume will be Bolsover Castle in Derbyshire, Boscobel in Shropshire, Corbridge Roman Town in Northumberland, Dover Castle in Kent, Eltham Palace in London, Kenilworth Castle in Warwickshire, Osborne on the Isle of Wight, Pendennis Castle in Cornwall, Witley Court in Worcestershire, Whitby Abbey in Yorkshire and Wrest Park in Bedfordshire.

The Jewish Museum in London has closed its current site in Camden as part of plans to sell the building and reopen in a new location.

Trustees of the museum, which receives £224,000 a year from Arts Council England (ACE) as part of the National Portfolio for 2023-26 announced the plans in early June. 

It hopes to reopen in a larger new home within the next five years.

Nick Viner, chair of trustees, told the BBC: "It's been an incredibly tough decision, but the museum has always found it difficult to be financially sustainable even though it's had some huge success with exhibitions.

"We are planning to do several temporary displays in London and beyond all whilst we think about how we can engage communities online with our collections."