Latest News
International Museum Day 2025: The Future of Museums in Rapidly Changing Communities
International Museum Day 2025: The Future of Museums in Rapidly Changing Communities
To celebrate International Museum Day 2025, the museum's Creative Learning Team profile some of their recent community work. The team are passionate about creativity and self-expression, and the different ways that being creative can empower individuals and communities to tell their own stories and share their experiences. Responding to and re-interpreting our museum collections can give opportunities for new reflections on histories and the chance to include new perspectives that help shape our shared future.
Art Angel Community Collaborative projectWorking collaboratively with Art Angel, we offered a group of adults the opportunity to engage in a mixture of creative activities. The…
Previous News
Visual Arts and Craft Makers Awards: Dundee
The Visual Arts and Craft Makers Awards: Dundee are inviting applications from professional artists and makers based in the City.
In partnership with Creative Scotland, the Visual Artist and Craft Makers Awards: Dundee has been established to support Dundee-based visual artists and craft practitioners in their creative and professional development.
The awards are intended to encourage artists to stay in Dundee and to ensure that the arts play a vital and lasting role in the City.
Awards of between £500 and £1500 are available. Mentoring grants are also available…
Download application forms and guidelines at:
Visual Artist and Craft Maker Awards: Dundee
The closing date for applications is Tuesday 5 February, 2019.
“Beatlemania” Images go on Show in Dundee
Photos taken in Dundee, the city where the phrase ‘Beatlemania’ was coined, have gone on show at The McManus: Dundee’s Art Gallery & Museum. A small selection of 10 images taken of The Beatles performing at the city’s Caird Hall on 20th October 1964 have gone on display as part of their Revealing Characters Exhibition. The images show the Fab Four in the early days of their meteoric rise to fame, performing in front of an excited crowd.
Taken by Monifieth-born photographer Winnie Forbes-Cochrane, these pictures are part of 33 photographs that were put up for auction earlier this year and successfully secured for the city’s collection by Leisure & Culture Dundee.
The phrase Beatlemania was first conceived in Dundee after a promoter, Andi Lothian, witnessed fans’…
ARTIST ROOMS: Lawrence Weiner open at The McManus
Contemporary art with a Scottish twist will be on show at The McManus until next February. Can text really be art? Influential American artist, Lawrence Weiner adopted language as his medium early on in his career, and text remains at the heart of his practice. Best known for his arresting wall installations, Weiner’s text pieces can take many forms, but the core principle remains the same – his ideas should not be confined to the gallery but taken up by the viewer.
This exhibition draws from ARTIST ROOMS, a touring collection of over 1,600 works of modern and contemporary art by more than 40 major artists. The collection is displayed across the UK through a touring programme, supported by Arts Council England, Art Fund and Creative Scotland.
Unique to Dundee, Weiner’s…
CU ‘After Dark’ Halloween Tours at The McManus Collections Unit
The McManus Collections Unit on Barrack Street is inviting visitors to take take part in special spooky hallowe’en torch-lit tours on the evening of Thursday 25 October.
Curators and actors will highlight some of the strange and wonderful objects held in the Museum’s stores and bring to life characters of yesteryear. Tours are suitable for adults and children aged 8 years plus, children must be accompanied by an adult. Tours are free but booking is essential on 01382 307200. Tours begin at 6.00pm and last approximately half an hour; and leave every 20 minutes from 6.00pm to 8.00pm.
The ‘Minnie Lisa’
The ‘Minnie Lisa’ is rumoured to have been left behind following the smash-hit Duh Vinci exhibition at The McMenace…
Curators recently spotted the similarity between the Minnie Lisa and Minnie the Minx and it has now been added to ‘Bash Street’s Back’.
Art critics are already arguing it outshines Da Vinci’s most famous piece, The Mona Lisa…
As well as seeing the ‘Minnie Lisa’, everyone who visits McMenace between now and the closing date of October 21 can enter a prize draw.
The winner will be immortalised as a Beano character and introduced to the world on Beano.com. All visitors have to do to enter is share a picture of themselves at the exhibition on social media accompanied with the “bashtag” #McMenace.
McManus 168 Project is celebrating Success
The McManus 168 supporters group is celebrating the end of a project that has collected information on the original 261 subscribers who contributed in 1863 to the Albert Institute, now known as The McManus: Dundee’s Art Gallery & Museum.
Over 100 volunteers, many with no previous experience of archive work and ranging in age from 16 to 80+, have discovered exciting stories about the movers and shakers of Dundee in the 1860s. Cannibalism, bigamy, entrepreneurial spirit, fraud and adventures in Archangel sit alongside the huge contribution the subscribers made to the development of Dundee and to Scotland’s industries. The project team worked with two of Scotland’s most prominent historians, Professors Jim Tomlinson and Chris Whatley.
Sue Moody, Chair of…
A Lasting Legacy: Royal Academicians in the City of Dundee’s collections
This year, the Royal Academy celebrates its 250th anniversary. To become a Royal Academician is a huge honour – joining an exclusive membership that includes some of the finest artists in painting, sculpture, printmaking and architecture. There are only ever 80 serving Royal Academicians, all practising artists and each elected by their peers.
The Royal Academy Summer exhibition has a lasting legacy in Dundee, laying the foundations for the City’s nationally recognised permanent art collection. Look for the RA logo throughout The McManus during your visit, identifying works by Royal Academicians past and present. Highlights include stained glass windows designed by Edward Burne-Jones, paintings by Sir Henry Raeburn, John Lavery and Sir Frank Brangwyn and site…
Bash Street's Back
Beano Studios and The McManus: Dundee’s Art Gallery & Museum, are collaborating this summer to create a bespoke exhibition dedicated to the beloved Beano characters and comic.
In Beano’s 80th year, the special collaboration will see The McManus revise their name to ‘The McMenace’, for the duration of the exhibit from the 2nd June – 21st October 2018.
To commemorate the union, Beano comic illustrator Nigel Parkinson, created an original comic strip starring The Bash Street Kids larking about and designing the new sign for The McMenace. The illustration shows The Bash Street Kids tangled in the ‘Waldella, Dundee’ by artist David Batchelor, one of the museum’s most popular exhibits.
The unique exhibition will be a fun look at Beano…
BBC Civilisations: A 1,500 year old mystery…
The McManus: Dundee’s Art Gallery & Museum are hosting a workshop and tour on Saturday 10 March, 2018 as part of the BBC Civilisations Festival to accompany the highly anticipated TV series of the same name. The event is made possible with Art Fund support and will shed light on how the Picts lived and look into a 1,500 year old mystery surrounding the death of a man from Lundin Links near Largo in Fife.
Participants will come to The McManus to learn about how the Picts lived, they will then be invited to the Collections Unit to investigate the death of one Pictish man using the latest forensic technology. New evidence and a 3D facial reconstruction will reveal injuries for the first time that may have been responsible for his death.
Inspired by…
Large-scale sketch of Dundee on display at The McManus, Dundee's Art Gallery & Museum
Visitors to The McManus, Dundee's Art Gallery & Museum, will be able to see their city mapped out in a huge, aerial drawing by artist Carl Lavia, aka Sketch. Remarkably made from memory, the work conveys key landmarks and intricate details of the UNESCO City of Design. This exhibition marks the artist’s fourth stop on an epic road trip to sketch all 69 UK cities, and will be on display for 6 months from Saturday 17 February 2018.
A talented, self-taught artist, Carl has been sketching since he was 5 years old. As a child, he was fascinated with drawing maps, architecture and fictional cities. It was after contracting and overcoming Guillane-Barré syndrome, a condition that affects the nervous system and can leave sufferers paralysed, that he decided to take his childhood…
