Museums and heritage

The UK’s largest-ever exhibition of work by disabled artists will take place across the country on Saturday (2 July).

A total of 31 D/deaf, disabled and neurodivergent artists are planning to stage surreal and nonsensical interventions in 30 museums and galleries nationwide, to mark the 102nd anniversary of the first Dada International Fair in Berlin.

Organised by disabled-led visual arts charity DASH, the project entitled We are Invisible We are Visible asked artists to imagine what would happen if the Dada movement – which rejected logic and authority in favour of disruptive nonsense – had been formed during the Covid-enforced lockdowns.

Participating venues are all part of the Plus Tate network, with the project receiving £125,000 from the Ampersand Prize.

DASH Artistic Director Mike Layward says there is a strong parallel between disability art and the Dada movement: “Both movements are born out of political situations of inequality and oppression. At this time, Disabled people are at the forefront of the impacts of so-called austerity. Poverty and exclusion are rife. As [German Dadaist artist] George Grosz said, ‘Can we tolerate this state of affairs without taking a stand against it?”
 

Chesterfield’s Pomegranate Theatre is closing at the end of the month as part of a £17.5m restoration project.

The plans will see work completed on the Stephenson Memorial Hall, home to both the theatre and Chesterfield Museum, which has already closed.

Chesterfield Borough Council says the theatre will be extended and the museum reconfigured, with a new gallery space and café bar. New educational and community facilities will also be created.

The project is part funded by the council, with £11m coming from the government’s levelling-up fund.

The Council’s service director for leisure, culture and community wellbeing Ian Waller says the plans will make the Stephen Memorial Hall “even more memorable and enjoyable, creating a modern visitor experience in the heart of our town”.

The second round of the government’s Community Ownership Fund opened on Saturday (11 June).

The £150m fund is designed to help community groups bid for ownership of cultural buildings, namely historic buildings, sports clubs and music venues, to protect their long-term future.

The first round supported 39 projects to purchase assets that were at risk of closure, sale, neglect, damage, or were found to not be operating in a sustainable way.

Eligibility criteria has been widened to attract more applications. A requirement that the cultural asset must have had a community use in the last five years has been removed, and the minimum leasehold on the premises has been reduced from 25 years to 15 years.

Minister for Levelling Up, the Union and Constitution Neil O’Brien MP said the fund will help to “spread opportunity, boost local pride and level up every corner of the UK”.

Groups interested in applying are being invited to submit an expression of interest on the government website.

The UK’s Cultural Protection Fund is yet to designate funding to Ukraine to support widespread damage to heritage sites caused by Russia’s invasion. 

The fund, administered by the British Council and backed by the Foreign Office, has delivered £30m since its inception in 2016 to protect cultural heritage at risk, namely across the Middle East and North and East Africa.

A British Council spokesperson told The Art Newspaper Ukraine was not automatically eligible for the fund, but an exception was made to allow allocation of £60,000 in March, which did not materialise.

In the last financial year, the £2.4m earmarked for grants had been largely spent before Russia’s invasion began in late February. This year’s fund is now open for expressions of interest, but the Ukraine is not listed as one of the fund’s targeted countries on the British Council’s website.

The Cultural Protection Fund did channel £80,000 through a Dutch non-governmental organisation in March, which is coordinating assistance for Ukraine.

The Prince Claus Fund shipped protection materials for works of art and buildings to Ukraine via Poland in March. A second consignment is now being organised.

The support package also received funding from foundations in the USA and Germany.

The Wallace Collection in London is Europe’s best free gallery, according to a study by the Knowledge Academy.

Researchers used data from TripAdvisor, comparing scores from the website’s star rating system for galleries with more than 500 reviews. 

A Bayesian average was calculated to give each gallery a score out of 100, based on a weighted average obtained from the number of reviews relating to each star rating.

The Wallace Collection scored of 94.5/100 - 0.1 more than second place, Panayia Evanyelistria Cathedral and Museums in Tinos, Greece - with Dublin’s Chester Beatty in third place.

Eight of the top ten galleries were in the UK, including three other venues in London. The National Gallery was placed fifth, V&A seventh and the British Museum ninth.

Imperial War Museums (IWM) has released details of its IWM 14-18 NOW Legacy Fund.

The £2.5m programme will see 22 artists create commissions, each inspired by the heritage of conflict, with internationally renowned artists Michael Rakowitz and Heather Phillipson among the first to be confirmed.

Five cultural organisations have each been appointed as major co-commissioning partners. 

Glasgow's the Hunterian, Swansea's Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, Ulster University in Coleraine, Northern Ireland, and Leicester Museums each receive £250,000 to commission an artist for the programme.

15 member organisations from IWM’s War and Conflict Subject Specialist Network will receive smaller grants of £20,000, to each commission a piece.

Commissions will go on public display across the UK between 2022 and 2024.

IWM says the reinvestment in the arts sector builds on over 100 years of art commissioning by IWM, which since the First World War has worked with artists to record the experiences of conflict for its collections. 

“After a challenging couple of years for the arts sector, we hope that the unprecedented opportunities enabled by the IWM 14-18 NOW Legacy Fund will kick-start cultural dialogue as we recover from the wide-reaching impacts of Covid-19,” said Director-General Diane Lees.

Plymouth museum The Box was one of 12 museums to be recognised in this year’s European Museum of the Year Awards (EMYA).

The awards, which were held in Tartu, Estonia, are Europe’s longest running celebration of museums across the continent.

A total of 60 museums were nominated, with The Box one of 12 awarded entries, receiving a special commendation alongside six other museums.

The award’s overarching theme this year was how museums can address local and global issues that impact their communities. 

The EMYA Jury described The Box as “a remarkable regional museum with strong ambitions for its cultural, educational and social effects”.

“With outstanding exhibitions and easy access for all, it has created a new cultural asset for its city and region and is an active advocate for the social change it can bring to its communities.”

The Netherlands’ Museum of the Mind won European Museum of the Year, after being unanimously voted for by the EMYA jury.

Applications are now open for the latest round of DCMS/Wolfson Fund for galleries and museums in England.

With £4m available in total, museums, galleries and museum services can submit bids of up to £300,000 for projects improving display and interpretation, visitor experience, access and environmental controls and conservation.

Institutions must be, or have previously been, members of an Arts Council England development scheme or sponsored by DCMS to be eligible.

DCMS and the Wolfson Fund have worked together for 20 years, delivering £48m across 400 projects at museums and galleries since the fund’s inception.

Full application details are available via the DCMS website. Applications will close 1 August, with the fund set to be shared out across two years.