Featuring displays on Boudicca and the Magna Carta to Stanley Kubrick and Stephen Hawking, the new St Albans Museum + Gallery will open on 8th June.
The museum will display 2,000 years of history, showcased in a permanent exhibition which will focus on the history of St Albans, from Boudicca and the Magna Carta to Stanley Kubrick, Stephen Hawking and Eric Morecambe.
The first temporary exhibition will celebrate the city's key role in the country's printing industry and will exhibit the first colour book printed in Britain.
A contemporary art gallery will show a specially commissioned installation from artist Susie MacMurray - known for her dramatic pieces in historic buildings and the museum will also host touring exhibitions from the Hayward Gallery and the V&A later this year.
What to expect from the museum
Visitors will be able to learn about how the city played a part in the lives of Sir Francis Bacon, Sarah Churchill Duchess of Marlborough, and the Ryder Cup founder and former mayor, Samuel Ryder.
Other figures will also feature in displays, including Stephen Hawking, Stanley Kubrick, Jim Rodford and Eric Morecambe.
As well as the country's first colour printed book, pieces that have never been exhibited before will feature, including one of a handful of military helmets that survived World War One intact - of some 750,000 that were originally made by women workers, in a St Albans straw hat factory - for British forces in 1915.
The print exhibition will also tell the story of how a St Albans-based printing company printed over a thousand million pieces of fake news: newspapers, propaganda sheets and false documents, in the time of World War Two - including a fake edition of The Telegraph, designed to fool Rudolph Hess into thinking Hitler had betrayed him.
Working in partnership with UH Arts, the University of Hertfordshire's arts and cultural programme, the museum and gallery will also host a range of immersive art installations and displays.
While the museum will be free to enter, there will be a small entry fee for national-touring exhibitions from top UK museums.
For more information, visit www.stalbansmuseums.org.uk.
A round-up of special exhibitions, events, coach trips and holidays to mark the 80th anniversary of the D-Day Normandy landings in 2024.
Faye Brant-Key at Staffordshire’s National Memorial Arboretum on working with a variety of groups, the different seasons and 2024 events.
Here’s exactly what groups can look forward to at Staffordshire’s National Memorial Arboretum, the nation’s year-round place to remember.
A cover from one of Elvis Presley’s guitars and his famous aviator sunglasses are on display at Direct from Graceland: Elvis at London Bridge until September.
