Category Archives: Museums

Transatlantic slavery’s role in shaping Manchester to be explored in exhibition

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Joint project between Guardian and city’s Science and Industry Museum will open in early 2027

The role transatlantic enslavement played in shaping Manchester is at the heart of a new exhibition developed in partnership by the Guardian and the city’s Science and Industry Museum.

The exhibition is the first time the museum, which tells the story of Manchester’s transformation into the world’s first industrial city, has put the links between enslaved African people, cotton and the city at the centre of a display.

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London museum security guards urge public to stay away in strikes over pay

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More walkouts planned in 2025 at V&A, Natural History and Science museums as workers demand living wage

Three of the UK’s biggest museums face the threat of strike action in 2025 by security guards over pay and conditions.

Guards at the Science Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Natural History Museum are in dispute with the external contractor, Wilson James. They want a basic pay rate of £16 an hour to cope with the cost of living crisis.

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‘Illegally smuggled’ cannon at Tower of London subject of dispute with Ireland

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Newly released documents show Irish officials sought return of cannon sold by ‘gang of British treasure hunters’

Rare cannon allegedly smuggled out of Irish waters by a gang of British treasure hunters and acquired for a knockdown price by a Tower of London official were at the centre of a decades-long dispute between British and Irish officials, according to newly released records.

Irish officials made extensive efforts to convince UK authorities to return the bronze cannon after claiming they were “illegally smuggled” from a Waterford shipwreck and sold to the Tower of London.

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Still life quartet by Dutch golden age master to be shown together in Cambridge

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Jan Davidsz de Heem’s four paintings of sumptuous food and luxury objects were produced as series

A quartet of influential still lifes from the Dutch artist Jan Davidsz de Heem will go on display together for the first time since the 17th century at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.

The four paintings were produced as part of a series by De Heem, who is considered to be a master of pronkstilleven – a style of ornate still life painting – during the Dutch golden age, depicting displays of sumptuous food and luxurious objects.

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Gulag History Museum in Moscow temporarily closed ‘for safety reasons’

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Kremlin critics fear move is part of Russia’s efforts to whitewash Soviet past and shut independent cultural institutions

Moscow’s award-winning Gulag History Museum announced its surprise closure on Thursday, a move critics attribute to the Kremlin’s efforts to whitewash Russia’s Soviet past.

The closure was officially put down to alleged violations of fire safety regulations but comes amid an intense campaign by Russian officials against independent civil society and those who question the state’s interpretation of history.

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British Museum receives record £1bn donation of Chinese ceramics

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Collection of 1,700 pieces dating from third to 20th century is highest-value gift of objects in UK museum history

The British Museum has been given a private collection of Chinese ceramics worth about £1bn, the highest-value object donation in UK museum history.

The 1,700 pieces dating from the third to the 20th century have been given permanently by the trustees of the Sir Percival David Foundation. They had been on loan to the London museum since 2009.

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Grand Egyptian Museum to open main galleries for trial run to 4,000 visitors

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Date for official opening still not announced for $1bn-plus mega-project more than a decade in the making

Egypt’s vast and much-delayed antiquities museum will partly open its main galleries on Wednesday, including 12 halls that exhibit aspects of ancient Egypt.

The Grand Egyptian Museum, a mega-project near the famed Giza pyramids that has cost considerably more than $1bn (£765m) so far, will open its halls to 4,000 visitors as a trial run until the official opening date, which is yet to be announced, according to Al-Tayeb Abbas, assistant to the minister of antiquities.

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Former Nintendo factory in Kyoto opens as nostalgia-fuelled gaming museum

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Museum features consoles from 1983’s Famicom to 2017’s Switch, as well as honouring Nintendo’s pre-video-game era

Traditionally, visitors to Kyoto in October come for momijigari, the turning of the autumn leaves in the city’s picturesque parks. This autumn, however, there is a new draw: a Nintendo museum.

The new attraction, which opens on Wednesday, is best described as a chapel of video game nostalgia. Upstairs, Nintendo’s many video game consoles, from 1983’s Famicom through 1996’s Nintendo 64 to 2017’s Switch, are displayed reverently alongside their most famous games. On the back wall, visitors can also peer at toys, playing cards and other artefacts from the Japanese company’s pre-video-game history, stretching back to its founding as a hanafuda playing card manufacturer in 1889. Downstairs, there are interactive exhibits with comically gigantic controllers and floor-projected playing cards.

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Tens of thousands of artefacts looted from Sudan museum, says official

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Thefts at Khartoum’s National Museum, one of most important in Africa, took place in region controlled by Rapid Support Forces group

Tens of thousands of artefacts have been looted from a Sudanese museum regarded as one of the most important in Africa, an official at the institution has said.

The official at the National Museum in Khartoum said satellite images taken last year showed trucks loaded with artefacts leaving the museum and heading for Sudan’s borders, including that with South Sudan.

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V&A celebrates a century of national theatre archive with tribute to avid collector

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New exhibition, named after ‘theatrical encyclopedia’ Gabrielle Enthoven, showcases British stage history from the Restoration to Fleabag

She was an avid collector of playbills, programmes and props who kickstarted the largest theatrical archive of the nation, now housed at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Without Gabrielle Enthoven, we would not have theatre studies as a discipline today, according to Simon Sladen, the museum’s senior curator of modern and contemporary theatre and performance.

Yet many will never have heard of Enthoven. That is about to change as the V&A has named a new exhibition in her honour, celebrating a century of the national archive, which is now protected by law.

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Boy, four, who broke bronze age jar returns to museum in Israel

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The family watched the rare 3,500-year-old jar, believed used for wine or oil, being restored at the Hecht Museum

Smashing a rare museum artefact dating back thousands of years would probably earn you a lifetime ban at the very least.

But a four-year-old who accidentally toppled a jar from the bronze age, leaving it broken into pieces, was welcomed back to the Hecht Museum in Haifa, Israel, a week after the unfortunate incident.

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‘I couldn’t believe it was my son who did it’: boy, 4, smashes bronze age jar in Israel museum

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Instead of chastising family over breakage, director of the Hecht Museum invites them back

A rare bronze age jar – its history stretching back at least 3,500 years – had long graced the entrance of the Hecht Museum in Haifa, Israel, offering visitors a closeup look at an intact artefact believed to predate the biblical King David and King Solomon.

That is, until it was accidentally smashed by a four-year-old earlier this week.

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Sinéad O’Connor waxwork pulled from Dublin museum after backlash

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Irish singer’s brother speaks of shock at ‘hideous’ figure which ‘looked nothing like her’

Dublin’s wax museum is withdrawing a figure of Sinéad O’Connor amid criticism from her family and members of the public that it looked “nothing like her”.

Many reacted with shock when the waxwork figure was unveiled on Thursday.

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Irish museum solves mystery of bronze age axe heads delivered in porridge box

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Artefacts sent by farmer, who made the ‘absolutely mad’ discovery while cutting silage

When the national museum of Ireland received two 4,000-year-old axe heads, “thoughtfully” wrapped in foam inside a porridge box, from an anonymous source last month, it put out an appeal. The objects were “significant” and “exciting”, it said, but experts needed to know more about where exactly they had been found.

Now they have their answer: a farmer from County Westmeath has come forward as the mysterious sender, saying he made the “absolutely mad” discovery while using a metal detector on his land.

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Early mammal could help answer one of biology’s biggest question, say experts

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Krusatodon kirtlingtonensis, which lived 166m years ago, ‘a piece of the puzzle’ explaining mammals’ success

The remains of a diminutive mouse-like creature that lived 166m years ago could help answer one of biology’s biggest questions of why mammals have become so successful, fossil experts say.

Krusatodon kirtlingtonensis belongs to the immediate predecessors of mammals and lived alongside the dinosaurs during the middle Jurassic age. But while it was originally known only from individual teeth, researchers have now reported two partial skeletons.

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Milan’s Brera Modern gallery to open in December after 50 years of delays

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Museum has been plagued by numerous delays and has seen off almost 40 Italian governments

More than half a century and 39 Italian governments after it was first envisioned, a new museum will open later this year to house modern art from Milan’s Pinacoteca di Brera gallery.

The Brera Modern, just a few doors from the main gallery, has been plagued by numerous delays, most recently the discovery of asbestos and problems with the conditioning system.

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Ancient Mayan vase purchased by US woman for $4 returned to Mexico

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Anna Lee Dozier bought ceramic vessel at Maryland thrift store but it will now reside in Mexico City’s main museum

Mexico has regained a lost ancient Maya vase because of a US woman who bought the artefact for less than $5 at a thrift store.

Anne Lee Dozier recently received an expression of gratitude from the Mexican embassy in her home town of Washington DC for her role in reuniting the 1,200-to 1,800-year-old vase with its motherland.

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Silk Road leads from Uzbekistan to London for landmark exhibition

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British Museum will host treasures from Samarkand in a bid to dispel cliches of camels, spices and bazaars

A monumental six-metre-long wall painting created in the 7th century, and 8th-century ivory figures carved for one of the world’s oldest surviving chess sets, are among treasures set to be seen in Britain for the first time.

The items will travel from the ancient city of Samarkand to the UK for an exhibition opening in September, as part of the first-ever loan from museums in Uzbekistan to the British Museum.

Silk Roads will be at the British Museum from September 26 2024 to February 23 2025. Tickets go on sale on Monday.

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Oxford University to return 500-year-old sculpture of Hindu saint to India

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Indian high commission made claim bronze depicting Tirumankai Alvar which it believes may have been looted

Oxford University has announced it is to hand back a 500-year-old sculpture of a Hindu saint to India.

The almost 60cm-tall bronze statue, which depicts Tirumankai Alvar, had been on display at the university’s Ashmolean Museum.

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Lost Caravaggio that was nearly sold for €1,500 goes on display at Prado in Madrid

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Museum’s experts realised painter’s Ecce Homo had been misattributed in auction catalogue

Four centuries after it was painted, three and a half centuries after it arrived in Spain and three years after it came perilously close to going under the hammer for just €1,500, a lost, luminous and lovingly restored Caravaggio has gone on display at the Prado in Madrid.

The Ecce Homo, painted in the Italian master’s dark and desperate last years, made headlines around the world after experts at the museum spotted it in an auction catalogue and rang Spain’s culture ministry to share their suspicions that the painting had been misattributed.

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