Image: Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Coventry
Herbert Art Gallery and Museum in Coventry has added two new exhibitions to its summer programme, alongside a run of family and community activities that place access and participation at the centre of its public offer. The shows, “TWO LIONESSES” and “Lou Blakeway: Painting Herstories,” are both listed as open from 23 June to 18 July on the museum’s “What’s On” page.
The Herbert’s current schedule suggests a busy mix of visual art, learning and community-facing events across its galleries and temporary spaces. In addition to the new exhibitions, the institution is running recurring family activity such as “Sensory Stories & Rhymes” and “Mini Makers: Messy Play,” as well as other workshops, talks and home education sessions. The museum also continues to host “Dippy in Coventry: The Nation’s Favourite Dinosaur,” described on the site as a three-year residency running from February 2023 to February 2027.
The exhibition titles point to the Herbert’s use of contemporary art programming to widen its audience. “Lou Blakeway: Painting Herstories” is presented as paintings by the artist Lou Blakeway, while “TWO LIONESSES” is an exhibition of paintings by artists Anisa Mosaiebiniya and Maya. The museum’s calendar does not provide further curatorial detail in the source material, but the titles alone indicate a focus on women’s histories and perspectives, a theme that has become increasingly visible across museum and gallery programming.
That emphasis matters because the Herbert sits within Coventry’s wider civic and cultural infrastructure, where a museum audience includes not only regular gallery visitors but also families, schools and community groups. The “What’s On” listings show a deliberately broad public model: sensory early-years sessions, home education activity, relaxed adult learning and drop-in exhibitions sit alongside the museum’s permanent and long-running attractions. The institution appears to be using its programme to connect art display with outreach, rather than treating exhibitions as isolated events.
The museum’s continuing Dippy residency remains one of its most recognisable draws, and its presence provides a stable anchor for a changing exhibition schedule. Alongside that, the addition of temporary visual arts shows helps keep the Herbert’s offer current and varied. For galleries outside the largest metropolitan centres, such combinations can be significant: they help sustain repeat visits while creating room for contemporary artists and local audiences to encounter new work.
The published calendar also shows that the Herbert is building a summer season around accessible participation as much as exhibition display. “Sensory Stories & Rhymes” runs through 14 July, “Mini Makers: Messy Play” is listed for 2 July, and other activities continue through July and August. For a regional museum, that breadth is important: it demonstrates how institutions can use art programming to serve a wide public while keeping exhibitions in active conversation with learning, play and community life.
