Royal Armouries secures funding for expansion

The Royal Armouries has secured two significant funding awards towards the installation of a Special Exhibitions Gallery at its Museum in Leeds.

The funding will contribute £250,000 in total to the new exhibition space, with £100,000 and £150,000 grants from the Wolfson Foundation and Garfield Weston Foundation respectively.

The Gallery is the first element of the wider Armouries 700 plan, which, at 700 years since the founding of the Armouries collection, is an ambitious programme of redevelopment and renewal of the museum experience.

The Special Exhibitions Gallery will allow an additional 100,000 visitors per year to experience historical stories brought to life by curatorial teams from across the world working in partnership with the Royal Armouries’ own curators.

Nat Edwards, director general and master of the Royal Armouries said: “The Gallery will allow us to stage large-scale exhibitions which bring to life the human stories behind the arms, armour and conflict of the past and help us consider what this means for us now.”

The gallery represents a central plank in the Royal Armouries strategy to widen access to its collection and diversify audiences, with a focus on exhibitions with popular themes which can engage a wide range of people.

The first exhibition in the new Gallery, Gladiators- Heroes of the Colosseum, will open to the public in June 2025.