Exhibitions
Codebreakers and Groundbreakers
A pioneering and interdisciplinary exhibition, Codebreakers and Groundbreakers will bring together, for the first time, the remarkable intellectual achievements and parallel narratives of two groups of ‘codebreakers’ working at the same time, but independently: those involved in breaking the Second World War codes and those who deciphered the ancient script of Linear B – Europe’s earliest comprehensible writing system...
24/10/2017 to 04/02/2018
Free
Degas, Caricature and Modernity: Daumier, Gavarni, Keene
Edgas Degas (1834-1917) possessed what his friend Walter Sickert (1860-1942) described as ‘a rollicking and somewhat bear-like sense of fun’. This exhibition looks at three caricaturists and satirists whose work Degas admired and collected in large numbers: Honoré Daumier (1808-79), Paul Gavarni (1804-66) and Charles Keene (1823-91)...
12/09/2017 to 21/01/2018
Free
Degas’s Drinker: portraits by Marcellin Desboutin
Edgar Degas’s famous painting In a Café (L’Absinthe, 1875-6), features a dissolute bearded man whom Degas modeled on his characterful friend and fellow artist Marcellin Desboutin (1832-1902). Both men shared a passion for printmaking and this exhibition explores the Museum’s rare collection of Desboutin’s sensitively executed prints in drypoint...
19/09/2017 to 25/02/2018
Free
Lunchtime Talks
Displays
The Frua-Valsecchi collection
Over the past fifty years, Francesca and Massimo Valsecchi have built up a remarkable collection of paintings, furniture, sculpture, glass and ceramics. This includes the renowned nude portrait of Patricia Preece by Stanley Spencer (Gallery 1), William Burges’s painted ‘Flax and Wool’ cabinet (Gallery 2), a Spanish 17th century polychrome wood sculpture of the Christ Child (Gallery 6), Art Nouveau Tiffany glass (Gallery 1), metalwork designed by Christopher Dresser (Gallery 2) and an extremely rare Meissen porcelain vulture (Gallery 27)...
01/08/2016 to 30/12/2018
Free
Terra Firma
Artist Pallavi Paul’s installation considers the mechanics and practices of truth production. The central motif of the ‘secret’ invites visitors to engage with ideas of espionage, secrecy and the world of information by viewing, reading and walking on this artwork. This textual landscape, composed visually to look like code, responds to the Codebreakers and Groundbreakers exhibition.
24/10/2017 to 04/02/2018
Free
Hugo Dalton: the revival lightdrawings
The artist Hugo Dalton will be projecting his dramatic lightdrawings onto sculptures in the Greece and Rome Gallery. His works will interact with the architecture of the surrounding gallery to create a series of immersive installations. Dalton’s work has previously been shown at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Today Art Museum (Beijing) and he has created a stage set at Sadler’s Wells Theatre.
21/11/2017 to 14/01/2018
Free
Currencies of Conflict: siege and emergency money from antiquity to WWII
Sieges have been a common feature of warfare for most of recorded history, with emergency money in the form of coins or paper being made for the use of the defending garrison or local people. This display throws new light on the story of these emergency currencies from the ancient Greek world to the Second World War.
31/10/2017 to 23/02/2018
Free
