Museums and heritage

The Victoria and Albert museum dedicated to children and young people will reopen to the public on 1 July, following a three-year closure and £13m refurbishment.

Young V&A – formerly known as the V&A Museum of Childhood – features over 2,000 objects dating from 2300BC to the present day. They are displayed across three new galleries: Design, Imagination and Play.

The range of different zones include an open design studio, a games design space for teenagers and an interactive Minecraft installation in the Play zone.

The museum, located in Bethnal Green, caters for children aged up to 14 and could help to fill the gaps in state school cultural provisions, said Tristram Hunt, the V&A’s Director.

“The V&A believes in the transformative power of creativity, and it’s critical we work to support and develop the next creative generation,” he said.

“The optimistic and transformative power of creativity radiates through Young V&A and we cannot wait to unleash it upon our teenagers to toddlers.”

The museum is free to enter and will run a programme of events and themed exhibitions throughout the year, beginning in October with an exploration of the influence of Japanese history and folklore on popular culture, technology and design.

The British Museum has offered to pay translator Yilin Wang for her work, after she alleged her poetry translations had been plagiarised.

Last week, the museum removed a segment of its China’s Hidden Century exhibition after the writer said she received neither credit nor payment for her translations of work by Chinese revolutionary Qiu Jin.

The museum said that it had issued an apology for the “unintentional human error” and had “offered financial payment for the period the translations appeared in the exhibition, as well as for the continued use of quotations from their translations in the exhibition catalogue”. 

The museum described the matter as “an inadvertent mistake”. It has offered Wang payment in line with its usual rates, The Guardian reported.

Museum staff spent years working on the exhibition, which includes 300 objects and research from more than 100 scholars from 14 countries. Some staff and curators were subject to “unacceptable” attacks on social media and through emails after the plagiarism allegations, the museum claims.

“We stand behind our colleagues fully and request those responsible for these personal attacks to desist as we work with Yilin Wang to resolve the issues they have raised concerning the use of their translations within the exhibition,” it said.

Academics who have previously worked with the museum have written to express their concern, including Julia Lovell, Professor of Modern Chinese History and Literature at Birkbeck University and one of the principal researchers of the exhibition, who said she was “in full sympathy with Ms Wang’s anger”. 

“It was a genuinely accidental, unmalicious human error amid a very complex project, for which the British Museum have apologised profusely and sincerely, and sought to make amends,” she said.

In a statement on Twitter, Wang said that the museum had told her it would not be reinstating her translations in the exhibition. Her work is acknowledged in the exhibition’s catalogue.

Derbyshire County Council has pledged to offer continued support to Buxton Museum after it was forced to close for maintenance work.

The BBC reports that Buxton Museum and Art Gallery shut at short notice at the start of June when dry rot was found in the building, with no timeframe given for how long remedial work will take.

But after a visit to the museum Derbyshire County Council Leader Barry Lewis said there is an "absolute commitment" to the service.

"Closing the museum and art gallery was a great disappointment but necessary so that this vital investigation work can be carried out," he said.

"However, there is an absolute commitment to supporting the museum and securing the long-term future of its collections."

Eight members of staff are currently working to move exhibits to storage before being moved to other roles.

During the closure the council is encouraging visitors to continue to enjoy the museum via the Wonders of the Peak website and by taking a virtual museum tour.

A formerly run-down World War Two building at Bletchley Park has opened as a new museum learning centre, part of a £13million redevelopment of the historic site.

The centre is in Block E, originally built in 1943 as part of Bletchley’s wartime intelligence gathering operation.

The restored and refurbished building in Bletchley, Milton Keynes is dedicated to ‘formal and informal learning programmes’.

Lily Dean, Learning Manager for the Bletchley Park Trust, the independent charity that runs the site, said it would be a "state-of-the-art learning centre".

She added: “This facility will enable more students to visit us, supporting their studies in STEM subjects, and helping us to share the amazing feats of human ingenuity that took place at Bletchley Park with more learners than ever before.”  

Block E features eight learning spaces designed to host more than 13 tailored workshops.

The completion of the new learning centre is the concluding phase of a redevelopment project that has also seen the creation of a new permanent exhibition, 'The Intelligence Factory', and a Collection Centre housing more than 420,000 items relating to Bletchley Park's wartime work.

Researchers will delve into Portsmouth’s heritage, culture and collections with funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) for nine PhD studentships.

Portsmouth City Council was awarded the fully-funded PhD studentships as part of the AHRC’s Collaborative Doctoral Partnerships programme.  

Researchers from the University of Portsmouth, along with other Higher Education institutions, will work with the city’s museums and archive team to design and co-supervise research projects based on the city’s historic collections, heritage and culture.

“This is a real coup for the city as the programme typically supports national organisations – it shows the strength and depth of our heritage and collections,” said Counsellor Steve Pitt, the Leader of Portsmouth City Council with responsibility for culture.

“This programme will help us uncover new perspectives on the city’s past and help us to share our story and heritage in new and exciting ways.”

Professor Anne Murphy, Executive Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Portsmouth, said the researchers’ discoveries “will open up Portsmouth’s amazing heritage and culture to new perspectives and audiences in and beyond the city”.

The council is inviting expressions of interest from Higher Education institutions who would like to collaborate on research proposals, with the first projects projected to begin in October 2024.
 

The Vagina Museum has exceeded a fundraising target to allow it move into a new premises situated between two railway arches in East London.

According to an online crowdfunder, over 2,400 donations have helped the museum surpass its £85,000 target.

The organisation's director, Florence Schechter, had said the museum would face permanent closure if the target was not reached.

The museum has been homeless since January after being given less than a week to vacate the premises it held for less than a year, causing the museum to operate digitally in the interim.

In an update shared on Twitter, the museum thanked all donors, adding that is had been "really touch and go": "If we didn't reach the target, we would have had to wind up".

"We're busily preparing design and fit-out work for our new home. And we're planning new exhibitions as well as levelling up our permanent exhibition," the statement added.

The fundraiser will remain open until early June, with additional proceeds going towards the musuem "opening its doors in an even stronger and more secure position".