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Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens
Throughout 2024 – 2025, Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens’ exhibition programme has continued to entertain, inspire, and resonate with our visitors.
In July 2024, a dual programme with NGCA saw the opening of Ian Macdonald’s Fixing Time exhibition, the first comprehensive retrospective exhibition of the artist’s work, with the Museum’s display spotlighting key photographic series such as Heavy Industry and Smith’s Dock Shipyard, as well as previously unseen portraits captured in secondary schools. The exhibition provided inspiration for family creative workshops, working with artist Pui Lee to create industrial landscapes, self-portraits and lino printed ships. A Portrait Station in the Art Lounge encouraged visitors to draw and display their own portraits and a Changing Childhoods trail encouraged conversation between the generations about different experiences of childhood. Adult visitors enjoyed talks led by Ian about his life and work.
Coal Face was an exhibition of a collaborative project between writer Dr Louise Powell and photographer Andy Martin using film, tintype portraiture, and poetry, to share stories of Sunderland’s collieries through the faces, hands, and words of those who knew them best: coal mine workers and their family members. Coal Face shared the hardships, resilience, and community spirit found in coal mining communities of the region. The learning programme included a Study Day with in-conversation artist talks. And series of Go and See visits supported by Cultural Spring, saw community groups take part in guided tours and object handling sessions.
Loved visiting the Museum, really educational and set out in such a way that it’s entertaining for adults and children…I expected to be here for 20 minutes but was kept interested for over 2 hours
Visitor review
The Museum’s Creative Age group took part in a Creative Coal project, co-creating sensory resource boxes on the theme of coal-mining for older people living in care home and supported living settings, working with storyteller and heritage educator Elizabeth Baker.
The boxes contain sensory objects linked to life in coal mining communities, with supporting factsheets, conversation starters, oral histories and creative activities. This project is part of a UK-wide Working Together project led by GEM (Group for Education in Museums) and CHWA (Creative Health and Wellbeing Alliance) and generously funded by National Lottery Heritage Fund.
The Older Women’s Artist Collective worked with photographer Sophie Piper to explore photographs of working women in Sunderland from the 1940s to the 1960s in the archives, supporting Sophie’s PhD research with University of Sunderland. Their research and creative responses were captured in the Re-visualising Women’s Work exhibition in the Art Lounge from October 2024 – January 2025.
April 2025 saw the opening of Sheila Fell: Cumberland on Canvas, the first major retrospective of Fell’s work in over 30 years. The exhibition explored her sources of inspiration, artistic development, recognition, and legacy. Drawing together 98 works from both public and private collections from across the country, the exhibition brought in loans from institutions such as Tate, Royal Academy, National Portrait Gallery, MIMA, and National Museums Liverpool. Originated and developed by Tullie, Carlisle, the exhibition was able to tour to Sunderland through a partnership between the museums.
Young people from the Celebrate Different Collective worked with curator and Amateur Ancestor curator and producer Justine Boussard to co-create a new takeover tour, re-interpreting objects in the Museum galleries through an eco-lens. Objects selected for the tour included a walrus head, a frog in a mug, a bronze age axe, a Tamagotchi game and a coelacanth fossil which were re-contextualised within the climate crisis. The tours were launched during the Bright Lights Youth Arts Festival in February Half Term 2025.
Finally, last year we were delighted to support the opening of the new Mowbray Park Community Garden, creating a dedicated outdoor space for community growing and wellbeing programmes.
We had such a wonderful day at Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens! I was genuinely impressed by how much there was to see and do – and the best part is, it’s all free to enter! It’s a fantastic place for families.
Visitor review
