Museums at Night


Museums at Night is a twice-yearly festival of late openings, sleepovers and special events taking place in museums, galleries, libraries, archive and heritage sites in the United Kingdom. It is affiliated with the European Night of Museums programme, and takes place on weekends in late May and late October.
Museums at Night is core funded by Arts Council England and administered by Culture24. For Museums at Night weekend 2009, cultural and heritage venues in the UK staged 157 events, attracting over 34,000 visitors.
Museums at Night weekend sees combined cultural and heritage programmes offered by multiple organisations in many United Kingdom towns and cities, including Stockport, Bath, Dorchester, Norwich, Liverpool and NewcastleGateshead. The largest single programme within the festival is that organised in Newcastle Gateshead covering over 50 venues under the title The Late Shows.

Participants

The "Connect!" competition between museums and other cultural hosting institutions engages artists to produce art for the festival weekend.
One of the artists who participated in Museums at Night during May 2013 through The Late Shows was Julia Vogl, who created a chandelier with the help of members of the public, using 2500 recycled plastic bottles. Davy and Kristin McGuire participated in Museums at Night in November 2015 with Starkers, bringing the Williamson Art Gallery and Museum's statue Pauline to life, animating her to give her opinions on the visitors to the gallery over the years.