York Museums Trust

York Museums Trust

The Yorkshire Museum, one of the trust's sites.
Founded	26 February 2002 (2002-02-26)
Founder	R I L Guthrie, M J Allen, D E Rayner, R E Rushforth
Dissolved	N/A
Type	Charity
Registration no.	1092466
Location	York, England
Origins	Created by City of York council to manage the city's museums and galleries
Area served	Yorkshire
Services	Running York's city-owned museums and galleries
Key people	Chairman Sir John Lawton Chief Executive Janet Barnes
Mission	"Our Mission is to cherish the collections, buildings and gardens entrusted to us, presenting and interpreting them as a stimulus for learning, a provocation to curiosity and a source of inspiration and enjoyment for all."
Website	yorkmuseumstrust.org.uk

York Museums Trust (YMT) is the charity responsible for operating some key museums and galleries in York, England. The trust was founded in 2002 to run York's museums on behalf of York City Council.^[1][2] It has seen an increase in annual footfall of 254,000 to the venues since its foundation.^[3]

Sites

The trust runs four cultural venues and a gardens.

• 
  The Yorkshire Museum
• 
  York Museum Gardens
• 
  The Castle Museum
• 
  York City Art Gallery
• 
  St Mary's (contemporary art space)

The Yorkshire Museum

This is the historic county museum displaying collections inherited from the Yorkshire Philosophical Society and acting as a regional collecting museum.^[4]

York Museum Gardens

The Museum Gardens are a botanical garden containing the Yorkshire Museum and St Mary's Abbey.^[5]

York Castle Museum

The Castle Museum is a social history museum housed in two former prison buildings.^[6]

York Art Gallery

York's Art Gallery has a large collection of paintings and an internationally important collection of studio ceramics.^[7] In 2012 the trust obtained £7 million of funding for major refurbishment of the gallery.^[8]

York St Mary's

York St Mary's is a contemporary art space in the deconsecrated church of St Mary's, Castlegate.^[9] The first use of the space was a joint exhibition by a number of artists, but since 2005 St Mary’s has hosted installations by individuals, which are changed on a regular basis. The first of these commissions, inspired by the medieval building itself, was a textile work by Caroline Broadhead called Breathing Spaces. This was followed by Echo, a work by Susie MacMurray. In 2012, Laura Belem created The Temple of a Thousand Bells, which used individually-made clear glass bells in a composition combining bell chimes with a narrative describing how a temple sinks into the sea, silencing the music of a thousand bells.^[10][11]

Funding

The Trust is primarily funded through the City of York Council and the Arts Council. The Trust also derives substantial revenue from admission charges and other income sources. Total funding and income for 2013/14 is expected to be £5.85 Million.^[12][13]

Operations

Middleham Jewel

Over 1000 nationally important paintings held by the Trust have been made available online as part of a cooperative project with the BBC and the Public Catalogue Foundation.^[14][15] A number of objects with a Yorkshire connection and held by the Trust were included in the BBC History of the World project, including the Middleham Jewel, the York helmet, and a tin of Rowntree's cocoa from Ernest Shackleton’s unsuccessful Nimrod expedition to the South Pole.^[16][17][18]

History

• In 2009 jointly acquired with the British Museum the Vale of York Hoard,^[19] a Viking treasure hoard valued at over £1,000,000.^[20]
• An exhibition in 2011 of David Hockney’s largest landscape painting Bigger Trees Near Warter was the most well attended since the Trust had taken over the York Art gallery in 2002.^[21]
• In 2012 the Trust successfully raised enough money to retain one of a pair of Iron Age gold torcs that had been found in Towton, North Yorkshire.^[22]
• In 2013 the Trust in conjunction with the BBC organised a Stargazing Live event at the York Observatory in the York museum gardens.^[23]
• In 2014 a new exhibition will be opened by the Trust at York Castle Museum that will focus on the changes brought about by the First World War, in the centenary year of the start of the conflict.^[24]

References

External links

• York Museums Trust - official site