John Holt

Features Built heritage

Fit for a king | What it’s really like to work in a castle museum

Many of the castles that tower above our towns and cities have been turned into museums. John Holt talks to the people who manage them about designer downspouts, terracotta images of dictators and things that go bump in the night

Features Best In Show

Best in show | Pink Spread, 1986, by Mali Morris

Light, space and colour interact in this vibrant work on display in Newcastle University’s Hatton Gallery

Features Best In Show

Best in show | Layered Legacies, 2024, by Mani Kambo

Harewood House's artistic director chooses a contemporary piece that draws on the property's revered fine art interiors

Features Regeneration

Wish you were here | Is life always sunny for seaside museums?

At the height of the summer holiday season, John Holt dodges dive-bombing seagulls to talk to coastal museums about leaking roofs, fossil hunting and the grand old tradition of appropriating items from hotel bedrooms

Features Best In Show

Best in show | The Umbrellas, 1881-86, by Pierre-Auguste Renoir

How Leicester Museum & Art Gallery has used digital tech and animation to bring this masterpiece, on loan from the National Gallery, to life

Features Best In Show

Best in show | The Garden of Eden with the Temptation in the Background, c.1600

This slightly bonkers but brilliant masterpiece by Jan Brueghel the Elder takes centre stage at Compton Verney's latest show

Features Museums Change Lives

Museums Change Lives | 2023 Winners

Meet the latest winners of the MA's awards recognising social impact in museums

Features Museum of...

Best in show | Plaster, 1993, by Elisabeth Frink

This artwork, on display at Dorset Museum in Dorchester, shows the sculptor's fascination with animals in their wild state

People Museums Change Lives

‘It’s a huge process of learning and unlearning, making progress with kindness as you go’

Radical Changemaker Award-winner Zeynep Kuşsan tells us about her groundbreaking work

Features Best In Show

Best in show | Lady Dorothy Campbell as Niobe, 1935, by Madame Yevonde

Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne

Features Best In Show

Best in show | The Wife: Her Book, 1907, by Haydn Brown

This fascinating – if dated – piece of social history is the highlight of a new exhibition at Halliwell’s House Museum, Selkirk

Features Small museums

Tales of the unexpected

Unusual museums can be tucked away in unlikely places. John Holt talks to the people who look after these out-of-the-way venues about loneliness, plastic rats and preparing for Armageddon