Manchester Museum crowned champion
PLUS: Rave reviews for V&A East Storehouse
— In partnership with Ash Mann
Friday 30 May 2025 | news from museums, galleries, heritage and art, including:
Artists pay tribute to broadcaster Yentob 📺
Rachel Whiteread leads new outdoor art destination 🌳
Yet another Centre Pompidou outpost announced 🇧🇷
Happy Friday.
Some housekeeping to update you on.
As you know, alongside these Friday editions diving into the week’s museum and art news, I bring you interviews and opinion pieces from the sector’s high-profile voices in special mid-week emails. These have supposed to be fortnightly but the keen-eyed among you will know that’s a target rarely met.
The truth is that planning, pitching and executing those pieces takes a lot of time. And then ensuring everything is submitted and aligns to go out on the exact day it’s supposed to is complicated. Before I know it, the window to send them has passed. Add in the fact all this is done while also having a separate full time job has been a challenge too far for me.
BUT. I’m not abandoning these features. I think they offer valuable and helpful insight and analysis into this sector. I hope you do too. So, I’m going to start bringing these features to you WEEKLY.
Hear me out. Instead of having the Big Interview, the 250 Take and the Hotlist all in one fortnightly (lol) edition, I’ll be splitting them in two.
Every two weeks on a Wednesday I’ll send you an edition that solely focusses on an in-depth interview with an important voice. Then in the alternate weeks, an opinion piece by a guest writer will land in your inbox — expanded from the current 250 words to 500. In that same edition will be a longer Hot List of my curated round-up of what’s NEW to see, do, watch, read and more.
It may seem counterintuitive to be sending more emails in order to stay on top of the newsletter output, but in reality this will make the workload of each of these editions lighter for me, while also making them much more digestible for you reading them. So it’s win-win I hope!
And this is where you come in. I am ALWAYS on the look out for people to interview or pen those columns. So if you work in museums or art or any related field and you have something worth talking about or an opinion you want to share, then get in touch! Ideally there’ll be a news peg to them, but I’m open to all pitches
Equally, with a longer Hot List, if there’s a new exhibition, display, book, podcast, TV show, radio show, event, talk, lecture, course, print, product, or even branded-beer (like Tate’s!) that you think I should be shouting about then let me know. Ping it my way to hello@maxwellmuseums.com. (Especially if it’s connected to a venue outside of London. I get sent a vanishingly small number of updates from museums and galleries outside the capital and I would like many more!)
The next interview edition — next week fingers crossed — will be the final one under the old format. After that, it’ll revert to the new cadence and I’ll be landing in your inbox twice a week, every week.
If you want to sponsor any of these future editions, you can find out more about that here. Or if you want to shout me a pint for the seven hours of work put into TODAY’s newsletter, you can donate in a few clicks here. Thank you!
Now let’s dive in!
maxwell
— In partnership with Ash Mann
Let’s talk about digital failure
The cultural sector is going all in on digital.
But here’s a hard truth: many digital projects by cultural organisations fail.
Many of you reading this will have first-hand experience of it.
Why do they fail? Well, an important new report has found out.
Beyond the promise by digital strategist Ash Mann has brought together survey responses, lived experience, and existing research to ask: why does this keep happening to cultural organisations?
It’s a fascinating and important read for anyone with an upcoming digital project. Which will be many of you!
Best of all, it offers SOLUTIONS.
By digging into what causes failure, the report offers six recommendations on how you can be more confident in a project’s future success. There’e even a section on what you — yes you — can do right now to avoid pitfalls in your organisation’s digital transformation.
Dive into the report and how it can help you here. It’s all totally free to access.
Top stories 🚨
Manchester Museum crowned Europe’s best
Manchester Museum has been named European Museum of the Year.
The 138-year-old institution beat 42 other nominees to claim the title. It’s the first ever university museum to win since the prize’s inception in 1977, and it’s the first UK museum to win since the Design Museum in London in 2018. Manchester Museum reopened in 2023 after a £15m revamp that included a new south Asian gallery, a partnership with the British Museum.
Director Esme Ward accepted the award at a ceremony at the Sybir Memorial Museum in Białistok, Poland. Jury chair Amina Krvavac said: “As a university museum, it plays a vital role not only in academic research but also in advancing social responsibility and justice.”
Speaking to the Guardian, Ward said she’s not bothered if the museum’s approach is labelled ‘woke.’ She said “frankly, I don’t tell anybody what to think. I can’t bear it when people tell me what to think. That’s not what we do. We want to provide multiple perspectives to equip people to navigate this crazy world we’re in.” (Read more)
V&A opens its stores
After a decade in the making, V&A East Storehouse in London’s Stratford has been unveiled to rave reviews ahead of it public opening tomorrow.
The new £65 working store and visitor attraction houses 250,000 objects from the V&A’s 2.8m-strong collection, which are all on display in open racks and glass walkways, including the world’s largest Picasso work. The venue’s Order an Object service promises seven-days-a-week access to any item the public wants to see. Over 1,000 objects have been ordered so far — with the most-popular being a 1954 Balenciaga evening dress.
"The wonder of the Storehouse is the way it makes you feel close to art, as if you owned it" the Guardian said in a five-start review. The Times said it’s “amazing” and “feels quietly radical.”
"Supremely elegant" and "an architectural delight" was Oliver Wainwright's view on the work transforming the building which was the former media centre for the London 2012 Olympic Games. The FT thinks “it may prove to be as important to the museum as Tate Modern was 25 years ago.” (Read more)
UK news 🇬🇧
Camden Art Centre secures an (almost) century ✍️
Artists including Kara Walker and Sir Antony Gormley have helped Camden Arts Centre buy its building’s lease for the next 99 years from the council. A total of £1.9m was raised, with half coming from artists and galleries, many of which had previously exhibited at the centre. Director Martin Clark said: “This is an extraordinary achievement for the charity and provides much-needed financial resilience, following significant recent cuts to our public funding.” (Read more)
Artists pay tribute to broadcaster Yentob 📺
Ai Weiwei has said “it will be difficult to fill the void” created by the death of celebrated BBC arts broadcaster Alan Yentob. Tracey Emin said Yentob “did so much for art, creativity and TV” and that she’ll miss him ”tremendously.” Both artists had appeared on Yentob’s long-running Imagine BBC arts series. Anish Kapoor said “We shall miss his presence, particularly now when the arts and the public institutions that promote them are under such huge pressure from ideology-biased governments around the world.” (Read more)
London auction house ram-raid 🚨
Thieves have attempted a middle-of-the-night ram-raid on Mayfair’s Phillips auction house, just days before a sale of artworks by Damien Hirst. A car smashed into the front of the auctioneers before being abandoned. A crime scene was established around it but no arrests have been made. A staff member told the Metro that staff were left “shocked’ but that “everyone is ok.” The investigation is now under way. (Read more)
Whiteread leads new art destination 🌳
Britain’s newest contemporary art destination opens for the first time tomorrow in the grounds of the Goodwood estate (of Revival fame). The Goodwood Art Foundation in West Sussex will showcase art across 70 acres of ancient woodland and two new galleries. The opening season launches with a show devoted to British artist Rachel Whiteread. The Duke of Richmond and Gordon — whose family seat is Goodwood — said the venue will “foster mental and physical wellbeing, creativity, and all-round learning.” (Read more)
🔗 REVIEW | Rachel Whiteread – leafy woods, glorious views and beautiful, brutal blights | ★★★★ | The Guardian
Global news 🌎
Netherlands 🇳🇱
A pair of paintings by Dutch master Frans Hals — that possibly depict his own children — have been purchased with the help of the Dutch government after a century of being under private ownership overseas. They’ll now return to the Netherlands, where they’ll be shared jointly between the Frans Hals Museum and the Mauritshuis museum. Bought at auction for $7.8m, Dutch Culture Minister Eppo Bruins said “it’s fantastic that these paintings…are now home again.” (Read more)
Brazil 🇧🇷
Can you ever have enough Pompidous? The Centre Pompidou has announced plans for an outpost near Iguazu Falls in the Brazilian state of Paraná. It would be their first satellite venue in South America and it’s due to open in (an eyebrow-raisingly-close) 2027. This will be the fifth Pompidou outpost planned, joining Seoul, Brussels, Jersey City, and Saudi Arabia’s AlUla development on the ‘coming soon’ list. (Read more)
USA 🇺🇸
Washington DC’s Capital Jewish Museum has reopened following last week’s killing of two Israeli Embassy staffers outside the venue. Faith leaders, city officials and supporters gathered for the reopening ceremony. The museum has worked with police to ensure a safe reopening. Director Beatrice Gurwitz said “the kind of violence we saw grows out of the dehumanization of the Jewish people. What we do is tell stories about the Jewish experience… That all made us feel we had to reopen.” (Read more)
Belgium 🇧🇪
In a trial of a man who prosecutors accuse of being one of Belgium’s biggest cocaine smugglers, evidence has been presented alleging the defendant bought a 1626 masterpiece by painter Frans Hals weeks after it was stolen from a Dutch museum. The prosecution allege the man paid €550,000 in an underworld art auction for the work, in the hope he could use it as a bargaining chip with the authorities to keep “his woman out of jail.” The man denies ever having the painting. (Read more)
Italy 🇮🇹
Next year’s Venice Biennale will go ahead as planned, despite the sudden death this month of the event’s curator Koyo Kouoh. Bosses have revealed a team of curators, art historians and editors would deliver Kouoh’s exhibition “as she conceived and defined it.” The title will be In Minor Keys. Some of the participating artists and artworks had already been selected by Kouoh, but names and a full participation list won’t be revealed until February. (Read more)
News in brief 🗞️
Matisse makes it to Van Gogh Museum
Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum has acquired its first work by Henri Matisse. It “fill[s] a significant gap” in its collection after a long-standing ambition to secure a work by the French artist who was inspired by Van Gogh. (More)
Tourist tradition damaging UNESCO Heritage site
Tourists are causing significant damage to the Giants Causeway by wedging coins between the stones. The National Trust are urging people to stop the tradition in order to prevent further risk to the UNESCO World Heritage Site. (More)
The most ancient of art unearthed
The oldest human fingerprint has been unearthed in Spain — and it could be proof that Neanderthals made art. The 43,000 year-old red dot was made on a face-shaped pebble by an adult male finger for ‘artistic’ purposes. (More)
Toilet block row at historic cemetery
A row’s broken out over plans for an £18m development at London’s Highgate Cemetery. Families have threatened to exhume bodies over a “horrific” planned maintenance and toilet block. (More)
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