Museums and heritage

The National Gallery in London had to be evacuated and closed to the public on Tuesday (22 September) due to an incident involving a man who climbed onto its roof.

As of Wednesday (23 September) morning, the incident was ongoing with a heavy police presence visible at the gallery.

Police described the man as "distressed". Social media footage showed him sitting and standing on the area above the Sainsbury Wing of the gallery.

On Wednesday afternoon, a spokesperson for the National Gallery shared an update stating: "The incident continued throughout the night and part of following morning, with Trafalgar Square and the gallery remaining closed.

"At around 11.25am a man was detained under the mental health act and taken to hospital. The gallery opened to visitors at around 12pm"

Summer on the Square, an event scheduled to take place in Trafalgar Square across this week, reopened again on Wedenesday afternoon.

An investigation is now underway into how the man accessed the gallery roof.

The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust (SBT) has announced the launch of a three year project exploring the role of women in creating and maintaining the playwright’s legacy over the centuries.

“Prompted by the 400th anniversary of the death of Anne Shakespeare (nee Hathaway) earlier in August, we are embarking on an ambitious, multi-year project that will explore the sometimes hidden, often ignored, erased or forgotten stories of the many women who have influenced, as well as secured Shakespeare’s legacy,” said Professor Charlotte Scott, the trust’s Director of Knowledge and Engagement.

The SBT has committed to ensuring all the activity will be devised and led by women and female-identifying people. 

The project will focus on the lived experiences of the women in Shakespeare’s life, including his mother Mary, his sister Joan, his daughters Susannah and Judith and the extended networks of friends, neighbours and country women who maintained those relations.

The trust, which is responsible for maintaining the family homes, documents and artefacts relating to Shakespeare and Stratford-upon-Avon, will share stories and events for every family and an exhibition at Shakespeare’s New Place in Spring 2024. 

In 2025, the focus of the project will be the female gaze and the female characters who have contributed to Shakespeare’s place in theatrical history, including “lovers and Queens, witches, mothers, murderers, politicians and powerhouses”. 

The final year will centre on the women who made and continue to make Shakespeare famous, from actresses to artists, writers, readers and creatives who have brought his characters to life.

“We are approaching Shakespeare not as a single genius, but as the figurehead of a community and network of people who enabled and secured his place in the canon of western literature,” Scott said.

“He wrote at a time when society was highly patriarchal and socially stratified. However, his own life and much of his career was one which was ruled by women, from the monarch to his homelife.” 

The Scottish Government is to make more than £1m available to museums and galleries to help them achieve net zero emissions.

The Scottish Climate Engagement Fund, worth £550,000, aims to build understanding of the climate emergency and to mobilise climate action among communities.

Grants of between £50,000 and £100,000 will be awarded during 2023-24.

The funding is for public events, festivals and skills development. It will not support capital projects such as installing solar panels.

The deadline for applications is 1 September 2023.

The Scottish Government is also to give £500,000 to Museums Galleries Scotland towards running costs and resilience.

The money is intended to enable organisations across the country to reduce their capital costs and carry out crucial repairs and maintenance work.

“Given the current cost-of-living challenges and their impact on the ability of museums to run their services for the public, this £500,000 in funding will enable the museum sector to be more energy efficient,” said Culture Minister Christina McKelvie.

“In particular the fund will prioritise projects that will directly reduce carbon use or have a positive environmental impact.”

This work will contribute to achieving Scotland’s target of net zero emissions by 2045, she added.

“As well as encouraging the sector to be more sustainable, the aims of the fund align with our national priorities and will contribute to Scotland’s target of net zero emissions by 2045.”

CEO of Museums Galleries Scotland Lucy Casot said the additional government funding will “safeguard these spaces for years to come”.

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.