We’re really sorry, but the Grimshaw exhibition in the Art Gallery and the West Wing of the Rotunda Museum are currently closed due to water leaks following recent heavy rainfall. We’re working to open them again as soon as possible – thanks for your understanding. 

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New Digital Commissions

The commissions examine the significance of objects – museums artefacts, personal possessions or things noticed in passing – to make wider observations about society and social cohesion, to share personal experiences or to connect with people facing the challenges of social distancing. We recognise that museums and galleries have a social responsibility to support communities, now more than ever before. Here we’ve provided a platform to enable artists to share their messages to communities in, or coming out of, lockdown as we face the ‘new normal’.

Each commission is supported by access tools such as subtitling or audio description to enable as many people as possible to connect.

From stardust to stardust

Jane Poulton

A new photographic and text-based gallery of images that considers how personal objects can bring to mind moments of deep emotion from our own private histories.

New photographs were shared daily on Instagram for a week when the artwork launched. You can view the works via the button below.

Explore the project

Butterfly

Wanja Kimani 

A new film inspired by the everyday pleasures of a daily family walk.

Wanja Kimani’s Butterfly is filmed from the perspective of two children adjusting to life during lockdown, and what they collect and encounter on their daily walk.

Watch the film

The Unseeables (a Tale of Extinction in Three Birds)

Feral Practice

A new audio-visual work responding to Scarborough Museums and Galleries natural history collection and located within the context of the global pandemic. The Unseeables explores loss and reparation, extinction and conservation through three interwoven and differing stories – three ‘lost birds’ to Scarborough – that open up the strange and polarised relationship we humans have with other species and with ourselves.

Trigger Warning: this video includes description of animal death.

Watch the film

Chronicle ia

Jade Montserrat

A film created with filmmakers, Webb-Ellis, that explores the impact of lockdown and chronicles the process of making, and new ways of being, that encourage mutual support and acts of care.

Watch the film

Animal Archives: Re-wilding the Museum

Lucy Carruthers

An animation based on observations and speculations about Scarborough’s Natural History collection, exploring how we view the natural world during the global pandemic.

Will it become normal to see animals roaming the streets?

What species might return?

And considering how multi-species can co-exist in a shared space, how can we forge new connections?

Watch the video

Homecoming; A Placeless Place

Estabrak 

A film made in response to a selection of replies from the general public in Scarborough to a public call out in August 2020 which asked the question ‘What does home mean to you?’.

HOMECOMING intends to help push the boundaries of inclusive participatory practice by presenting artwork influenced by the exchange between low-engaged, under-represented, vulnerable, and ethnically diverse groups, the artist and the general public.

Trigger warning: This film contains strong language and flashing images.

Watch the film