The Art Explora Mobile Museum in the United Kingdom
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The Mobile Museum is a unique truck touring artworks from national collections, on a mission to make great art accessible to everyone, everywhere - across towns, villages and remote locations. The Mobile Museum offers a programme of exhibition visits and educational, participatory art workshops in partnership with schools and community groups.
Shaped by the SeaExhibition
In Summer 2026, the Art Explora Mobile Museum will be delivering a touring exhibition, 'Shaped by the Sea', travelling to communities from Plymouth to Preston from 15 June – 13 September 2026.
The aim of the Mobile Museum tour is to bring national collection artworks into communities and reach audiences who would not typically have access to museums and galleries.
For more information about the Art Explora Mobile Museum tour in the UK, please contact us at mumouk@artexplora.org
What, as humans, is our relationship to the sea? Over the centuries, artists have explored this question through different subjects, themes and media. The sea, while fascinating us, remains mysterious and elusive, sometimes tranquil and inviting, at other times tumultuous and unpredictable.
Setting sail
Our voyage begins with a look at the complex histories that have shaped the UK’s coastlines and ports. Painters in the 18th and 19th centuries documented scenes of a growing navy and trading routes, as well as picturesque scenes of life in harbours and ports. Romantic painters, like J. M. W. Turner, and Thomas Luny sought to express the power of nature shown in stormy seas and shipwrecks. Inspired by this tradition of marine painting, contemporary artists such as Lubaina Himid, Zineb Sedira and EVEWRIGHT reflect on the nature of our British identity, shaped by these complex stories of exploration, trade, migration and empire. Their works directly address the social impact of our maritime history, inviting us to question not only how the sea continues to shape our coastlines, but also ourselves as individuals and as communities.
Seaside memories
Sea journeys, real or imagined, also provide a space in which to dream, and perhaps to consider our thoughts and feelings about the climate emergency. Many 20th and 21st century-artists have been attracted by the quality of light around our coastlines. Bridget Riley and Tess Jaray adopted abstract imagery to distil their personal experiences of sea life, light and mood. Others, like Anya Gallacio and Emma Stibbon, draw attention to the threat to the seas and oceans caused by climate change.
The sea has always been a site of healing as well as precarity and danger. How can we use these experiences and memories to re-imagine our relationship with the marine world?
Artists:
Roger Ackling, Simon Bayliss, Samuel and Nathaniel Buck, Chila Kumari Singh Burman, Mohini Chandra, EVEWRIGHT, Anya Gallaccio, Lubaina Himid, Tess Jaray, Thomas Luny, Zethu Maseko, Paul Nash, William Pye, Bridget Riley, Ro Robertson, Zineb Sedira, Emma Stibbon and Joseph William Mallord Turner.
Soup, Socks, and Spiders! The Art of the EverydayExhibition
From 19 February to 11 May 2024 the Art Explora Mobile Museum in collaboration with Tate and MuMo toured the exhibition Soup, Socks and Spiders! Art of the Everyday across the Midlands and North. On this 12-week tour, the Mobile Museum hosted over 8000 visitors from communities across Ashfield, Nuneaton, Stoke-on-Trent, Tarporley, Walsall and Wigan.
Soup, Socks and Spiders!
Art of the Everyday
This exhibition brings together historic and contemporary works of art from Tate’s collection which present everyday objects in unexpected ways, making the ordinary extraordinary. From Andy Warhol’s celebrated Campbell’s soup can to a spider found by Cornelia Parker in the Tower of London, Art of the Everyday encourages us to look more closely at the world around us.
Artists have always depicted objects from their everyday lives. The genre of ‘still life’ – assembling a group of items like jugs, fruit and flowers on a table to draw or paint – tells us what objects artists considered important or interesting to record. In the early 20th century, as modern art was developing, artists started to use household items in their work. These ordinary objects were cheap and readily available, allowing them to experiment, challenge expectations of what is considered art, and test out new ways of seeing the world.
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Tate Liverpool and the Mobile Museum
About Tate Liverpool
Tate Liverpool is one of the city's most iconic cultural institutions, located on the Royal Albert Dock. The gallery houses part of the national collection of modern and contemporary art, as do Tate Modern, Tate Britain and Tate St Ives. Tate Liverpool reaches out to all communities in the region with projects such as the Mobile Museum, which enables the gallery to tell the story of art through the prism of the city of Liverpool and the north of the country.
Radical Landscapes Exhibition
First ever UK tour :
In Spring 2023, the Art Explora Mobile Museum in collaboration with Tate and MuMo toured artworks from the Tate Radical Landscapes exhibition around the Liverpool City Region.
This was the first time the Tate had set up such an initiative to bring works from the national collection directly to the public. It was also the first time the MuMo had been deployed in the United Kingdom. Over the course of 10 weeks, the mobile museum visited various locations in St Helens, Knowsley, Sefton, Wirral, Halton, and Liverpool.
The exhibition on board the Art Explora Mobile Museum included a selection of works from Radical Landscapes, which was first shown at Tate Liverpool in Summer 2022.
The exhibition featured works by JMW Turner, John Constable, Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, John Nash, Jeremy Deller and many more. The Mobile Museum also included artworks by leading contemporary artists such as 2022 Turner Prize winner Veronica Ryan and shortlisted artist, Ingrid Pollard. This project is supported by Art Explora with public funding from the National Lottery through Arts Council England.
The 2023 MuMo x Tate tour in numbers :
- 4036 visitors
- 10 locations
- 40 schools
About the Art Explora Mobile Museum
Head over to our main page to find out more about the Art Explora mobile museum and cinema!
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