Doors open to first of three MAGNET touring shows

Back to all News & Stories
By Press Office
News Press release
This Saturday (31 May) sees the doors open to the first of three new touring exhibitions opening this year, created by the MAGNET partnership (Museums and Galleries Network for Exhibition Touring).

The three exhibitions will tour across a total of 12 museums and galleries around England and be seen by more than half a million visitors by the end of 2028.

The exhibitions are:

  • Gender Stories, opening 31 May at Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, before moving on to Brighton Museum & Art Gallery and then Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.
  • Colour: Explore a world of wonder, opening on 19 June at Millennium Gallery, Sheffield and then touring to Tullie in Carlisle, Gosport Museum & Art Gallery in Hampshire, Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter and Bristol Museum and Art Gallery.
  • Human Natures, opening on 27 September at Derby Museum and Art Gallery, going on to Manchester Museum, The Great North Museum: Hancock and the Horniman Museum and Gardens, before finishing its run at Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery.

Each exhibition has been co-created by the museums and galleries it will visit, and will be ‘personalised’ by each new venue to maximise its relevance to local audiences – with venue-specific public programmes led by artists and local communities.

MAGNET is funded by Arts Council England and Art Fund, following a successful trial which saw the Hair: Untold Stories exhibition tour across three venues (the Horniman, Tullie and Weston Park, Sheffield) from November 2021 to October 2023.

A £336,000 Touring Projects grant from Arts Council England, funded by the National Lottery, has enabled the development and touring of the three exhibitions, while £75,000 from Art Fund is helping to fund a three-year full-time MAGNET Coordinator post, to ensure smooth running of the network

The network was established in 2020 and brings the 12 organisations together to pool their resources and share their collections with diverse national audiences. MAGNET is also working in partnership with The Exhibitions Group (TEG), delivering training and sharing resources to develop the skills and knowledge of the network.

MAGNET was conceived as a creative solution to the budget constraints and stretched staff capacity that museums face, and the environmental footprint of single-use exhibitions. Working together allows us to create better and more sustainable temporary exhibitions, and brings regional collections to a wider audience. Everyone involved across all our venues is so excited to see these three exhibitions come to life and begin their journeys around the country.
Peronel Craddock, Director of Content at Horniman Museum and Gardens

In addition to the three new exhibitions, MAGNET will create a raft of resources to be shared across the sector, to support others in the co-creation, touring and sustainable design of their own exhibitions, including:

  • a library of resources and templates on how to devise a partnership exhibition, and how to tour it – this toolkit will be shared in two phases from the end of this year.
  • a publicly accessible evaluation report to be shared in 2026, giving a detailed review of the process and outputs of the MAGNET network and the three exhibitions – a potential blueprint for the sector.
  • the results of an exploration – working with the Design Museum – of how collaborative touring exhibitions can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, waste and pollution for partners, while upskilling colleagues and providing training on the Gallery Climate Coalition’s refreshed carbon calculator tool.