Migration Museum's Euro 2020 campaign
Pus: Prado admits colossal error, and V&A announce major exhibitions
Today's edition is presented with Rebuilding Heritage
Happy Friday.
Firstly: it’s coming home.
Secondly: it’s coming home.
Thirdly: it’s bloomin’ coming home!
Euro 2020 is of course the biggest story in town this week, as the whole of England looks towards Sunday’s final. Wednesday’s semi-final was electric and it’s just the tonic we all needed after the past 15+ months. We’ve all got our fingers crossed.
Of course, this is a museums newsletter so it would be massively remiss of me not to draw your attention to the National Football Museum in Manchester. I can’t think of a better time to visit than tomorrow (and see their Euro 96 exhibition). Plus if you do, and you wear an England shirt, you get a free go on their Penalty Shootout interactive.
Finally, a big shout-out to the Museum of the Home whose Twitter handle name-change is just brilliant. Take a look
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This week’s top story
The Migration Museum has been going viral with its Football Moves People project during Euro 2020. The widely-shared bright-green graphics have been highlighting just how much migration has played a part in every team in the championship. (Seven of England's starting XI against Denmark in the semi final had parents or grandparents born overseas). It’s been a surprisingly well-resourced campaign for such a small museum - billboards don’t usually come cheap - but demonstrates how museums, no matter their size, can creatively tap into the actual conversations the nation is having.
Sunday’s final is likely to get towards 30 million TV viewers in the UK (27.6 million watched the semi-final). With many museums barely mentioning the tournament, it seems a bit of an own goal for institutions constantly concerned about relevance.
This week’s other stories
2022 will be a stellar year at the V&A. They’ve announced their exhibition programme for the year ahead and it features major shows on Beatrix Potter, menswear, K-Pop and the culture of South Korea, and African fashion. The Irish News
Next year will also see the artwork on the Fourth Plinth in London’s Trafalgar Square replaced. Samson Kambalu’s anti-colonial sculpture has been selected to be the next work. Then in 2024, it’ll be succeeded by casts of faces of 850 trans-people. The i
The iconic 16th century portrait of Richard III, the last king of the House of York, goes on display in the Yorkshire Museum in the city today. It’s on loan from the National Portrait Gallery who are lending major works across the UK while they’re closed for redevelopment. BBC News
A bass guitar smashed by the Clash at one of their gigs - and immortalized on the cover of their London Calling album - joins the relics on display at the Museum of London. The Guardian
One of Scotland’s leading contemporary art galleries has unveiled its £4.3 million expansion. The Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh has taken over a former nightclub to double in size, and has reopened with a new exhibition by Turner Prize-nominated Scottish artist Karla Black. The Scotsman
Could the UK get a ‘Museum of Athletics’? Birmingham is proposing creating one as a legacy of the venue hosting the sport at next year’s Commonwealth Games in the city. Birmingham Mail
A new auction record has been set for a Leonardo da Vinci drawing, as a tiny sketch of a bear’s head fetches £8.9 million at Christie’s last night. It was once owned by Sir Thomas Lawrence and changed hands for just £2.50 in 1860. CNN
Madrid’s Prado Museum has quietly admitted it made a giant error over the attribution of Goya’s Colossus. 13 years ago they called it a “botched job” and reattributed it to one of the artist’s apprentices. Without announcing it, they’ve rectified their mistake. The Times
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