The Barber Institute of Fine Arts

The Barber Institute of Fine Arts’ galleries have reopened to visitors this summer following the completion of the first phase of a £10 million essential building improvement programme.

The Lady Barber Gallery, the principal exhibition space, has been completely refurbished, with the installation of new walls, floors, glass doors and state-of-the-art lighting. The air-handling system has also been completely replaced.

The galleries have reopened with no fewer than three new temporary exhibitions:

Claudette Johnson: Darker Than Blue
22 June – 15 September 2024
Claudette Johnson – recently shortlisted for the 2024 Turner Prize – is one of the most exciting and prominent artists working in the UK today. New and recent work features here in her first solo exhibition in the West Midlands.

Johnson is best known for her powerful depictions of the Black figure, reasserting its presence in histories of Western art. Her primary subjects are Black women, including herself, and, more recently, Black men. Through these figures, Johnson employs a powerful style to explore the body; her work challenges perceptions of identity, sexuality and wider political and social constraints, particularly those affecting Black diasporic communities.

The Hidden Lives of Plants: Botanical Illustrations from the V&A
22 June – 10 November 2024
There are almost 1,000 botanical illustrations in the Victoria and Albert Museum’s collection – ranging from scientific diagrams documenting medicinal plants to merchandising images that adorn seed packets. Many of these illustrations also exist as objects of beauty in their own right. They depict flowers and plants that have, over the centuries, had their own particular uses and values: the common-or-garden foxglove, harvested for centuries for its life-saving – although, also if taken in excess, lethal – sap; the flamboyant tulip, whose bulbs became tokens of trade and financial speculation, worth more than their weight in gold in the 17th-century Dutch Republic; and the sunflowers, grown to clear radiation at Chernobyl – among many other examples.

Women in Power: Coins from the Barber Collection
22 June 2024 –  26 January 2025
Spanning nearly 2,000 years and more than 5,000 miles, the Barber’s forthcoming coin exhibition explores historical women who have appeared on coins.

From London to Beijing, and from representations of gender-fluid deities from the 3rd century BC to Elizabeth II in 2022, the display focuses on the female rulers, potentates and icons whose stories have often been distorted or diminished over successive centuries and millennia.

The Barber’s Green Gallery, which contains the collection’s oldest Western paintings and sculpture dating from 1280 to 1600, has also been the focus of a major thematic redisplay project.