Play the Museum Pop-Up Exhibition

Exhibition passed: 9 May 2026 – 25 May 2026

Included in general admission tickets
Suitable for all ages
Wheelchair accessible

Interested in this exhibition? Plan your visit

Play the Museum is a pop-up exhibition created in collaboration with MA Fine Art Students at Bath Spa University, and the Holburne . Students were invited to respond to the collection, the site and William Holburne’s legacy.

Running throughout our historic galleries, the exhibits invite people to be curious about the collection and look through the eyes of contemporary makers and artists.

There are ‘Play the Museum’ maps to help visitors locate the works at our front desk.

Locations of artworks:

Approach to Holburne (front garden)

Camille Danner – Light out of the Darkness
Inspired by 19th-century candelabra depicting Mercury and Psyche in the Holburne collection, this plaster work draws on themes of mythology, travel, and transformation. The piece also pays tribute to the care and conservation that preserve the museum’s history and artefacts.

Posnett Gallery

Kate McMahon-Parkes – Forgotten Queen, Remembered
An earthenware Thali-style wedding dish responding to a 17th-century beadwork basket depicting Charles II and Catherine of Braganza. The work reconsiders Catherine’s overlooked legacy, exploring her influence on British culture, politics, and the colonial impact of her marriage and dowry.

Harriet Anderson – Gardening
This ceramic installation transforms everyday garden tools into delicate porcelain objects inspired by the Holburne’s decorative plate patterns. By rendering functional items unusable, the work reflects on luxury, excess, and the shifting value of everyday objects.

First Floor Landing

Jennifer Hamblin – Of Shoes & Ships
Porcelain shoe sculptures inspired by the 1763 Byam family portrait explore memory, identity, and the traces people leave behind. Blending personal objects with imagined histories, the work reflects on family, colonial legacy, and how lives are remembered through material impressions.

Lachlan Albutt – Proliferate
An interactive video installation linking Bath City Farm and the Holburne Museum through projected imagery of an insect hotel. Blending ecology, macro photography, and ideas of overlooked life, the work invites viewers into a shifting microworld shaped by observation, anticipation, and environmental connection.

17th Century Gallery

Harry Wilkins – Unknown Man
Through performance and single-channel video, Unknown Man responds to anonymous figures and forgotten histories within the Holburne collection. A body lying face down in the gallery becomes a quiet act of resistance, reflecting on anonymity, absence, and colonial memory.

Mezzanine Stairs and Fletcher Gallery

Lucy Cummins – Pulling on a Thread of Time
Responding to the Plantation Day Book and Edmund de Waal’s in time installation, this work reflects on memory, absence, and the fragility of historical narratives. Through paper, thread, and audience participation, it invites visitors to consider lost voices, erased identities, and the stories carried through time.

Space to Be (Second Floor)

Emma Lilwell – Tend

A site-specific installation developed in collaboration with the Golden Maple tree in Sydney Gardens, Tend explores the legacy of Bath’s Quaker-led sugar boycotts and the Holburne’s historical links to the sugar trade. Combining community-made ceramics, collected conversations, and natural materials, the work reflects on collective memory, care, and ongoing acts of repair.