London Transport Museum acquires a Banksy
PLUS: Somerset Museum buys England's most valuable treasure
— in partnership with Art UK
This edition also features: V&A Storehouse opening date | Whitney Museum abolishes U25 entry fees | Birmingham Museum reopens
Happy Friday.
What a week.
Some of you might not know that my day job (yes, this newsletter is a side hustle on top of the 9-5) is doing PR for the Design Museum in London. And I hope you spotted that this week we opened our major retrospective exhibition on the career of iconic director Tim Burton.
To say it’s been a busy few days is an understatement. Tim Burton inaugurated the show on Wednesday, and he kindly carried out lots of press activity to promote the show. This included a BBC News interview which got stonking coverage across the most-watched news programmes in Britain, and a Times interview which I am absolutely delighted with.
But it was also busy because we held a press conference with Mr Burton.
One of my favourite aspects of working in PR is when you help make a news story go out into the world. And ultimately, putting one of the world's greatest filmmakers in front of near 100 journalists is going to make news magic.
Dozens — if not hundreds — of news stories were generated. Across the whole planet.
We had reporting published in Chile 🇨🇱, the USA 🇺🇸, Switzerland 🇨🇭, Spain 🇪🇸, and the Mirror newspaper in the UK 🇬🇧 to name but a few, just from the newslines generated from that 45 mins in our lecture theatre. Nothing beats getting a news story out there — especially one that goes so big.
Coinciding with the conference, we also announced that the World of Tim Burton exhibition has generated the biggest ticket pre-sale in the Design Museum’s history. I was thrilled to be able to put another news line out there, and to generate even more coverage.
None of this should be a surprise for readers of this NEWSletter — that brings you the latest museum news every Friday. But yeah, I love news stories!
So if you’re reading this and you work in museums, galleries, heritage or art, and you have a story — send it my way! Email hello@maxwellmuseums.com with the stories you think I should know, and that maybe will end up in these emails.
For now, I’m going to lie in darkened room all weekend to recover. How Burtonesque.
— maxwell
ps. read to the end to see where you all recommended I should travel to for a winter holiday.
— in partnership with Art UK
Boost sales with the Art UK Shop
Christmas is coming, and so the 140 institutions selling their unique products through the Art UK Shop are going to benefit.
That’s because the Shop is a destination e-commerce site for consumers looking for cultural gifts — and sales generate cash for partner museums and galleries.
“Our marketing activity helps bring these wonderful products to customers and allows shoppers the chance to give back to the collections they love” Camilla Stewart, Director of Partnerships and Collection Support at Art UK says.
That revenue is not just at Christmas though. The top-sellers earn thousands of pounds of net income per year from the Shop. Art UK’s marketing support is year-round.
It’s why the Courtauld Gallery, National Portrait Gallery and the Pier Arts Centre are just some of the collections already on the store.
Want a festive boost for your organisation too? Now’s the time to get involved, so that everything is in place in time for Christmas 2025. But you’ll be making money long before then.
Email shop@artuk.org right now to start benefiting from the Art UK Shop.
Need To Know
V&A Storehouse to open
The opening date for the V&A’s new East London outpost has been revealed. The V&A East Storehouse will welcome visitors from 31 May next year.
Over 250,000 objects will call the Storehouse home, which is in the former media centre of the London 2012 Olympic Games. Visitors will be able to go on a self-guided experience, taking in six large-scale works — including the giant controversial fragment from Robin Hood Gardens estate — as well as over 100 “mini changing curated displays” that aim to share “more diverse, topical, and meaningful stories about the V&A’s collections.”
The new site is also promising a “revolutionary” Order an Object service, where members of the public can book to see an object seven-days-a-week. The V&A says this brings its collections to people “at a scale not possible anywhere else in the world.”
V&A Deputy Director Tim Reeve said he hopes the Storehouse “will shift the dial in creating more transparent and personalised experiences” and that it will immerse visitors in “the magical behind-the-scenes world of museums.” (Read more)
Donation abolishes entry fees
A $2.25m (£1.7m) donation from abstract artist Julie Mehretu will mean admission charges for under 25s at New York’s Whitney Museum have been scrapped.
In total, the three-year trial is costing $5m, and will begin in December. It builds on the museum’s popular Free Friday Nights and Free Second Sundays initiatives, launched in January 2024. The visitors who came during these free hours were on average younger — by a decade — and far more ethnically and racially diverse than the museum’s typical crowd.
Mehretu said her reasons for the making the initiative happen was that she remembered how tight her own budget had been in the late 1990s when she was trying to break into the New York art scene. “If you’re waiting tables like I was, you can’t afford to go to museums all the time,” she said, “but young artists need access to art.”
Director Scott Rothkopf said the Whitney aimed to top a million visitors this fiscal year, back to pre-pandemic levels for the first time. (Read more)
£4m treasure to call Somerset home
The Museum of Somerset is to be the permanent home of England’s most valuable treasure discovery in history, after charity South West Heritage Trust purchased it for a record £4.3m.
The Chew Valley Hoard — which consists of 2,584 silver pennies from c.1066–68 —was discovered in January 2019 by seven finders while metal detecting in North East Somerset. They’ve each received £300,000 from the sale, as the landowner where they were uncovered pockets half the cost. One of the finders — Adam Staples — said it was “frustrating” he had to wait five years for his payout.
The hoard will go on display at the British Museum next month, before touring the country. The acquisition and tour have been made possible through a £4.4m grant from The National Lottery Heritage Fund.
Heritage minister Sir Chris Bryant said this “remarkable hoard gives us unique insight into our country's rich history.” Eilish McGuinness, Chief Executive of The National Lottery Heritage Fund said because of “National Lottery players, this incredible hoard will be valued, cared for, and sustained, for everyone.” (Read more)
News from the UK
Brum reopening 👼 | Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery has partially reopened after lengthy restoration. The highlights are the new Made in Birmingham display and a revamp of the famous Round Room. “The new displays are a celebration of our vibrant city and its rich history” Co-CEOs of the museum said. Yet only a dozen of 40 galleries have reopened, with questions over where the £20m needed to restore other spaces will come from. The bankrupt city council has blocked all new cash for the museum. (Read more)
🔗 OPINION | Who will step in to save Birmingham’s crown jewels? | Richard Morrison in The Times
Banksy’s destination 🚦 | London Transport Museum is on the cusp of acquiring a Banksy artwork. Transport for London has confirmed to news site
that it’s finalising the transfer of ownership for a work of a mouse with a clock that was stencilled on a TfL-owned traffic light control box in Croydon in 2019. For five years it’s been in storage after TfL had it removed almost immediately. Details on whether it will go on display are still a mystery. (Read more)More treasure ✨ | An “utterly unique” hoard of Bronze Age items discovered by a metal detectorist in the Scottish Borders has been acquired by National Museums Scotland (NMS). The Peebles Hoard — dating from 1,000-800 BC — was found in 2020. The hoard includes items whose function is not yet understood, tantalisingly meaning our understanding of this period could be rewritten. NMS has launched a fundraising campaign to support conservation and future research on the items. (Read more)
Portrait “disgrace” 🖼 | A Sinn Féin employee who works in the Northern Ireland assembly has resigned after admitting involvement in an incident where a portrait of a former DUP mayor was significantly damaged at Belfast City Hall. The DUP — whose leader called it “a disgrace” — said the portrait had its glass smashed during an event celebrating an Irish language group’s 20th anniversary. The Police Service of Northern Ireland said that they had received a report of criminal damage. (Read more)
News from around the world
USA 🇺🇸 | Over $11 million (£8.5m) was raised in a single night for LA’s Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. The cash was donated as part of their annual gala. Quentin Tarantino used his acceptance speech for the Luminary Award to announce he was donating his first handwritten draft of the script for Pulp Fiction to the museum. Paul Mescal received the Vantage Award, which toasts an emerging artist who ‘contextualises dominant narratives around cinema’ (whatever that means). (Read more)
USA 🇺🇸 | The Smithsonian Institution has received a $40m donation to support its upcoming celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the US’s founding in 2026. The cash is coming from The Lilly Endowment, founded in 1937 by the heirs of the pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, and it will pay for exhibitions and events throughout the Smithsonian's museums. It’ll also fund the reopening of the Arts and Industries Building and Smithsonian Castle. The donation is part of the Smithsonian’s $2.5 billion fundraising campaign. (Read more)
Best of the rest
Museum majesty | HM The King hosted an official dinner for the Commonwealth Heads of Government in the grounds of Samoa’s Robert Louis Stevenson Museum. Charles wore an eye-catching outfit made by the Samoan school of fine art. (More)
Frieze flogged | The company that owns the Frieze art fairs is eyeing selling them off. Entertainment and sports conglomerate Endeavor confirmed it was moving to offload them, alongside the Miami Open and Madrid Open tennis tournaments. (More)
Caught out | A man was found hiding in a Scunthorpe museum display cabinet after allegedly breaking into the building in the middle of the night. The man was arrested at North Lincolnshire Museum on suspicion of burglary. (More)
Biennale begins | The National Gallery of Canada has commissioned artist Abbas Akhava to represent the nation at the next Venice Biennale. It marks the first artist announcement for the festival which opens in 2026. (More)
Retail boost* | Make money for your museum or gallery in 2025 — and beyond — by selling your products on the Art UK Shop. You’ll benefit from their valuable marketing activity too. (More)
*This is sponsored content
👀 Last week’s most clicked news story | Former BBC presenter Andrew Marr slams contemporary art world for being 'corrupted, pretentious and offensive'
📊 Last week’s poll results | Where should I go for my winter sunshine + cultural fix?
— Valletta 🇲🇹 42%
— French Riviera 🇫🇷 23%
— Malaga 🇪🇸 17%
— Lisbon 🇵🇹 17%
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Thanks Maxwell
Thanks for the mention of the Banksy, with a headline much punchier than the way I buried it!