Southampton is celebrating after being awarded £7.2million from the Arts Council England to build a new arts complex in the centre of the city. An additional allocation of £1.5million agreed last week, on top of the £5.7million originally offered to the scheme, will support a number of essential changes to the project, including the re-design and relocation of the gallery to the ground floor. Southampton City Council and Arts Council England will continue to work closely together and in the coming weeks will ... Read the full story

A museum commemorating an earthquake that killed more than 240,000 people 34 years ago in north China’s Tangshan City opened to the public Wednesday on its anniversary. Covering an area of 12,000 square meters, the museum displays more than 400 photographs and 600 pieces of articles concerning the 1976 earthquake and seven models that give a snapshot of the disaster and relief operations, said a spokesman with the museum. The museum is located inside a memorial park built on the ruins of a locomotive plant ... Read the full story

The redevelopment project will unite three currently separate buildings, the Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, Bedford Museum and Bedford Gallery, in one building. For the first time, Bedford’s unique collections will be housed under one roof enabling the Art Gallery & Museum to provide excellent new services improved access and fantastic facilities. The Art Gallery & Museum will provide excellent community facilities at the heart of the cultural quarter and make a significant contribution to the ... Read the full story

This summer, the National Railway Museum present a jam-packed schedule of activities to keep the whole family entertained. The theme is the seaside, 1930s style – we’re celebrating the 175th anniversary of the Great Western Railway, which promoted itself as the ‘holiday line’. Special Events: Yorkshire Weekend 31 July – 1 August: Make sure you visit us for Yorkshire Day – as well as everything below, two celebrity guest donkeys Bubbles and Billy will be here, and you can enjoy a Punch ... Read the full story

BOSTON, MA – Themes such as the passage of time and the enduring nature of close family relationships are brought into focus in the exhibition Nicholas Nixon: Family Album at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA). The show, on view from July 28, 2010, through May 1, 2011, in the MFA’s Herb Ritts Gallery, features more than 70 black and white portrait photographs by Nicholas Nixon, one of the most celebrated American photographers of this generation. Among them are pictures of Nixon’s wife, Beverly ... Read the full story

The Erie Art Museum is proud to announce that it has received a Museums for America grant for $91,714 from the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services, to support the Museum’s popular Kids As Curators program for the next three years. In announcing the award, IMLS noted that it had received 510 applications, but was only able to award grants to 178 projects—based on a peer review process—for a total investment of $19.5 million. The Kids as Curators program is a unique Museum collaboration with ... Read the full story

Los Angeles,- The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) presents Catherine Opie: Figure and Landscape, featuring recent work by the internationally renowned and LA-based photographer Catherine Opie. The show’s primary focus is high-school football, a subject that allowed Opie to explore issues of masculinity, community, and national identity. On view through October 17, 2010, the exhibition is curated by Britt Salvesen, curator and head of the Wallis Annenberg Photography Department, as well as the Prints ... Read the full story

Enjoy hands-on activities and special demonstrations all summer long as Naper Settlement celebrates “Summer at the Settlement” at its historic museum village, located at 523 S. Webster St. in Naperville. Ongoing activities include the popular geocache medallion hunt, bucket brigade, yoke and bucket carrying, flag-raising at Fort Payne, grinding corn, making butter and many more activities. Throughout August, Settlement Sundays feature free do-it-yourself ice cream sundaes and special activities ... Read the full story

Sail into history with the Australian National Maritime Museum as HMB Endeavour embarks on its first ever circumnavigation of Australia! In April 2011, the magnificent replica of James Cook’s HM Bark Endeavour will undertake an historic circumnavigation of Australia. Built as a gift to the Australian people, Endeavour will follow in the wake of our earliest European explorers, visiting major and regional ports right across Australia. The voyage will commence in Sydney and trace James Cook’s ... Read the full story

The Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) presents PIXAR: 25 Years of Animation, a major exhibition of over 500 works by the artists at Pixar Animation Studios, including drawings, paintings, and sculptures that illustrate the creative process and craftsmanship behind Pixar’s wildly successful computer-animated films. The exhibition opens this Saturday, July 31, and runs through January 9, 2011. www.museumca.org This is a significantly enhanced presentation of the exhibition, which is returning home to ... Read the full story

Selected drawings from the John E Christian Family Memorial Trust, Inc. Collection are on display at the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Automobile Museum through December 2010 as well as two automobiles owned by Frank Lloyd Wright. AUBURN – Frank Lloyd Wright is generally regarded as one of the world’s great architects. His impact goes beyond the architectural world. By creating designs for furniture, textiles, flatware and more, he surrounded us with unique objects of beauty, making our lives richer and more ... Read the full story

Never before seen by the public, the contents of an Emperor’s private retreat deep within the Forbidden City will be revealed for the first time at the Peabody Essex Museum. On view September 14, 2010 to January 9, 2011. An 18th-century compound in a hidden quadrant of the immense imperial complex, the Qianlong Garden (also known as the Tranquility and Longevity Palace Garden), is part of a decade-long, multimillion-dollar conservation initiative undertaken by the World Monuments Fund in partnership with the ... Read the full story

James T. Ulak, deputy director and senior curator of Japanese art at the Smithsonian’s Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Galleries, has been selected to receive the “Order of the Rising Sun,” an award conferred by the Japanese government for exceptional civil or military merit. The Order is presented in recognition of Ulak’s significant career contributions in the service of strengthening bilateral relations and building collaboration between public and private fine arts ... Read the full story

SALEM, MA – Libraries, archives, and museums face similar challenges. Libraries and archives affiliated with art museums have a second layer of concerns to consider in determining how they best relate to their parent institution. The Peabody Essex Museum’s (PEM) Phillips Library will host a symposium on September 23 and 24, 2010 to explore the issues associated with this very question. Major topics to be addressed include: *The Role of the Library and Archives in an Art Museum *Data Unity in the ... Read the full story

This special exhibition at the Amon Carter Museum demonstrates how documentary photography transformed modern art in America through an examination of the work of photographers Berenice Abbott, Margaret Bourke-White, and Walker Evans. Open October 2, 2010–January 2, 2011. In the 1930s, American photographers pushed the genre of documentary photography to the forefront of public culture in the United States and onto the walls of newly opened museums and art galleries. Together, the careers of Abbott, ... Read the full story