York Museums Trust is the charity responsible for operating some key museums and galleries in York, England. The trust was founded in 2002 to run York's museums on behalf of the City of York Council. It has seen an increase in annual footfall of 254,000 to the venues since its foundation. In both 2016 and 2017 it saw its annual visitors numbers reach 500,000 people.
York's Art Gallery has a large collection of paintings and an internationally important collection of studio ceramics. In 2012 the trust obtained £7 million of funding for major refurbishment of the gallery.
York St Mary's
York St Mary's is a contemporary art space in the deconsecrated church of St Mary's, Castlegate. The first use of the space was a joint exhibition by a number of artists, but since 2005 St Mary's has hosted installations by individuals, which are changed on a regular basis. The first of these commissions, inspired by the medieval building itself, was a textile work by Caroline Broadhead called Breathing Spaces. This was followed by Echo, a work by Susie MacMurray. In 2012, Laura Belem created The Temple of a Thousand Bells, which used individually-made clear glass bells in a composition combining bell chimes with a narrative describing how a temple sinks into the sea, silencing the music of a thousand bells.
Funding
The Trust is primarily funded through the City of York Council and the Arts Council. The Trust also derives substantial revenue from admission charges and other income sources. Total funding and income for 2013/14 is expected to be £5.85 Million.
Operations
Over 1000 nationally important paintings held by the Trust have been made available online as part of a cooperative project with the BBC and the Public Catalogue Foundation. A number of objects with a Yorkshire connection and held by the Trust were included in the BBC History of the World project, including the Middleham Jewel, the York helmet, and a tin of Rowntree's cocoa from Ernest Shackleton’s unsuccessful Nimrod expedition to the South Pole.
An exhibition in 2011 of David Hockney’s largest landscape paintingBigger Trees Near Warter was the most well attended since the Trust had taken over the York Art gallery in 2002.
In 2012 the Trust successfully raised enough money to retain one of a pair of Iron Age gold torcs that had been found in Towton, North Yorkshire.
In 2013 the Trust in conjunction with the BBC organised a Stargazing Live event at the York Observatory in the York museum gardens.
In 2014 an exhibition at York Castle Museum focussed on the changes brought about by the First World War, in the centenary year of the start of the conflict.
On 18 March 2020 the Trust announced that it was closing all of its sites due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On 28 July it announced that it had a £1.5 million shortfall in its finances due to the pandemic and, despite emergency funding from Arts Council England, it warned of possible job losses resulting from the prolonged closure of its venues.
