Treasured art and artefacts to travel to communities across the UK
Significant works of art including Constable’s The Hay Wain will go on display at museums and galleries across the UK thanks to the Weston Loan Programme with Art Fund.
The 10th year of the grants programme – which enables smaller museums to borrow major works from national or major lending museums and galleries – will see Pre-Raphaelite masterpieces, medieval manuscripts and one of the most celebrated paintings of the British Enlightenment go on display at 15 regional museums and galleries across the UK.
Museums lending works of art include the British Library, the Courtauld Gallery, National Galleries of Scotland, the National Gallery, Tate, the Victoria and Albert Museum and Wellcome Collection, with works going on show at museums in England, Scotland and Wales.
Highlights include:
A beautifully decorated 11th-century gospel lectionary from Pembroke College, Cambridge, currently on display (until 12 September 2026) at the Mappa Mundi and Chained Library Museum in Hereford as part of Shaping Early Medieval Faith: the Hereford Gospels – the first exhibition dedicated to Hereford Cathedral’s oldest text, dating from around 800AD.
Wright of Derby: From the Shadows (13 June – 1 November 2026) at Derby Museum and Art Gallery, co-developed with the National Gallery, will bring Joseph Wright’s celebrated An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump (1768) to the painter’s hometown for the first time in 80 years, as part of the ‘Year of Wright’.
Leonard McComb: Nature and Humanity (14 August – 31 October 2026) at Birkenhead’s Williamson Art Gallery, the biggest ever exhibition of the celebrated British artist’s work, will include the largest drawing on paper held by any UK public collection, Oriel Môn’s Rock and Sea Anglesey, as well Manchester Art Gallery’s Portrait of a Young Man Standing (1963-83) and the Royal Academy’s Sgt. Bert Bowers (1991).
Pre-Raphaelites: Art & Poetry (17 October 2026 – 13 February 2027) at Newcastle's Laing Art Gallery, the first major exhibition to explore the connections between poetry and visual art in the Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic Movements, with key loans including The Woodman’s Daughter (1850-1) by John Everett Millais from the Guildhall Art Gallery, Beata Beatrix (1877) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti from Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery and The Forest tapestry (1887) made by Morris & Co from the V&A.
Coven: Suffolk’s Dark Legacy of Witchcraft (16 October 2026 – 20 February 2027) at The Hold in Ipswich, exploring the 17th-century Suffolk witch trials – among the most brutal and widespread in England – will examine the stories of the accused and the changing image of the witch through time, with loans from Wellcome Collection and Tate, alongside pieces from Suffolk Archives’ own collection.
A major exhibition at the Museum of Somerset (opening spring 2027) will present the Chew Valley Hoard, the largest coin hoard ever discovered from the period of turmoil following the Norman Conquest, recently acquired by the South West Heritage Trust.
Surrealism from Below (23 July – 10 October 2027) at Fruitmarket, Edinburgh, curated by Dawn Ades and Gavin Grindon, exploring surrealism and dada through the lens of protest and activism with works from the collections of National Galleries of Scotland, including Joan Miró’s Aidez L’Espagne (Help Spain) (1937), André Breton’s Le déclin de la société bourgeoise (c1935-40), and Sam Haile’s Non Payment of Taxes, Congo, Christian Era (1937), alongside contemporary activist art and rarely seen radical protest artists.
Women In Focus: Pioneers of Early Photography / Focws Menywod: Arloeswyr Ffotograffiaeth Gynnar (opening 2027) at Amgueddfa Abertawe: Swansea Museum celebrating Swansea’s trailblazing 19th and 20th-century women photographers, offering a rare insight into their engagement with early photographic practice.
Further exhibitions opening in 2026 with support from the Weston Loan Programme with Art Fund include:
Constable: Walking the Landscape (11 July – 4 October 2026), which will bring the Suffolk-born artist’s The Hay Wain (1821) to the county it depicts for the first time.
Romantic Wales: JMW Turner in Carmarthenshire (May – November 2026), returning JMW Turner’s sketches of Wales to the landscapes that inspired them 200 years ago.
The first opportunity to see newly discovered Saxon artefacts excavated during HS2 works in Buckinghamshire in The Saxons, which recently opened at Discover Bucks Museum (until 1 November 2026).
Jenny Waldman, Director, Art Fund, said:
"As we mark 10 years of the Weston Loan Programme, thanks to generous support from the Garfield Weston Foundation, we’ve seen what’s possible when museums come together to share their collections. Communities and visitors to smaller museums across the UK have been able to see and enjoy remarkable works of art. From medieval manuscripts to Pre-Raphaelite masterpieces, this year’s projects bring extraordinary paintings and objects into new contexts, connecting more people with the stories our world-leading collections have to tell.”
Sophia Weston, Deputy Chair of the Garfield Weston Foundation, said:
“It is wonderful to see such a range of art forms, stories and venues represented in this latest round of recipients, from surrealism in Edinburgh, to Norman coins in Somerset. Looking back over a decade of the Weston Loan Programme we are hugely proud to have been able to facilitate the loans of so many precious and impressive publicly held artworks and objects to museums and galleries across the UK, where they have been seen by new audiences and in fresh contexts.”
Funded by the Garfield Weston Foundation, to date the Weston Loan Programme with Art Fund has supported more than 100 exhibitions at over 120 venues across the UK, including several touring shows, providing over £2.2 million of funding to regional museums and galleries and enabling thousands of people to experience nationally significant works in their local museums.
Previous highlights include the display of George Stubbs’ Whistlejacket (1762) in Milton Keynes, Antony Gormley's Field for the British Isles in Sunderland, Thomas Hardy's handwritten manuscript of Tess of the d'Urbervilles in Wiltshire, and the Galloway Hoard in Kirkcudbright.