News & Press

2025

New display in the Troubles & Beyond Gallery at the Ulster Museum

£200,000 Project highlights power of collaboration in post-conflict Northern Ireland

27.06.2025

The National Heritage Lottery Fund is supporting the Conflict and Legacy Interpretive Network to deliver an exhibition, a conference and online resources to create greater understanding on legacy and reconciliation.

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Scene of damaged houses on a street, with two young girls in dresses and hats in the middle of the street beside a 'street memorial' made during the Troubles. ©Estate of Akihiko Okamura / ©佐藤純子

Long Read

Side by Side: Ulster Museum explores the Troubles through three powerful exhibitions

18.06.2025

Akihiko Okamura: The Memories of Others joins Belfast Archive Project and The Troubles and Beyond exhibits, making it a trio of exhibitions on at once, in the Ulster Museum, to highlight the importance of museums in post-conflict Northern Ireland.

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L-R Aaron Ward, Director of Public Engagement National Museums NI; John Martin, Director, Woodland Trust Northern Ireland

News

Ulster Folk Museum site restoring woodland area larger than four football fields

02.06.2025

National Museums NI and Woodland Trust Northern Ireland’s partnership is aimed at boosting biodiversity. Northern Ireland's woodland cover lags behind European average at just 8.7 per cent.

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The main focus of the picture is on a report titled 'Trans-Inclusive Culture'. The book cover is coloured blue and pink-purple and is in the hands of a woman wearing silver rings and has pink nails, as she flicks through the document. You can make out a woman in a black and white dress sitting in the background of the picture..

News

National Museums NI joins partnership backed by Art Fund to advance trans inclusion

19.05.2025

The University of Leicester's Research Centre for Museums and Galleries (RCMG) has established a partnership supported by Art Fund – the national charity for art – with leading UK museums, galleries and heritage organisations to support a bold and ambitious step change in the capacity and confidence of the UK’s culture sector to advance trans inclusion.

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2024

Chief Executive of National Museums NI, Kathryn Thomson, dressed in a black jumpsuit, shakes hands with Princess Anne as she receives an awards. Princess Anne wears a tan coloured blazer, neck scarf and gloves.

News

National Museums NI recognised by Princess Royal Training Awards

29.11.2024

Now established as a prestigious and sought-after accolade, this year’s Princess Royal Training Awards attracted 127 applications from across the UK and Ireland with 52 winners - National Museums NI being one of them.

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Communities Minister Gordon Lyons & Kathryn Thomson, Chief Executive of National Museums NI

News

Communities Minister commends engineering heritage at museum visits

15.11.2024

Communities Minister Gordon Lyons has visited the Ulster Folk Museum and the Ulster Transport Museum. As part of the visits, Minister Lyons viewed the latest exhibit in the impressive transport collection.

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News

Voices of '74: Ulster Museum unveils powerful oral history project

25.10.2024

The online project draws on the importance of oral history to document the memories and experiences of the past, in order to encourage conversations about the future

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2023

The back of a person standing looking at a Peruzzi painting on a blue painted wall with down lighting

News

Christmas Gift to the Nation

12.12.2023

Rare painting by the Italian artist Peruzzi - the only surviving work by the artist in the UK - goes on display at the Ulster Museum. The Nativity dates back to the 16th century and was acquired by National Museums NI in 2022.

Three people dressed in dark clothes in a grassy area with trees in the background and two of them are standing near signs that promote an environmental and biodiversity message - 'meadow in progress' and 'let it bee'.

News

CEDaR unveils 10-year business plan to combat environmental and biodiversity crisis

4.12.2023

CEDaR is the Centre for Environmental Data and Recording and is a longstanding partnership between National Museums NI, DAERA, NIEA and the recording community in Northern Ireland.

Costumed guide at the Ulster Folk Museum holding a pitch fork on the farm during a learning programme for schools. Seven school children dressed in white t-shirts all have their backs to the camera, as they're interacting with the guide.

News

Ulster Folk Museum awarded the national Heritage Education Trust Sandford Award for the first time

10.11.2023

Ulster Folk Museum has been awarded the prestigious Sandford Award which recognises the high standard of our educational programme for schools.

2022-2019

Conservation Fellow at the National Gallery seated restoring Baldassare Tommaso Peruzzi's The Nativity.

News

Ulster Museum to be gifted Peruzzi’s The Nativity

24.12.2022

The incredibly rare sixteenth century work has been acquired by National Museums NI, in Christmas gift to the nation.

Attendees at an event held today at Ulster Museum.

News

Human Rights Day: Conflict textiles pieces acquired by National Museums NI

9.12.2022

Transnational textiles representing the personal experiences of those affected by conflict, including within Northern Ireland, taken into Ulster Museum's collection.

a man and two women beside a christmas tree

News

Art Unwrapped is back for its fifth consecutive year

9.12.2022

The annual ‘gift to the city’ will be on display at Ulster University’s new Belfast Campus.