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Welcome

Arts and Heritage Move to Trust Management

The management of The Herbert Art Gallery, Priory Visitor Centre and Undercroft, and the Lunt Roman Fort is transferring to an independent Trust in 2008; this will include all the new services at the transformed Herbert. Find out more about the new Trust.

The Trust is currently recruiting a Chief Executive and Director of Finance and will announce details of the appointments in due course.

The Herbert is at the cultural heart of Coventry.
We are part of the Arts and Heritage Service of Coventry City Council. We are in the middle of a major re-development including a new extension to the building which is scheduled for completion in 2008.

During the redevelopment works we are only able to offer a limited exhibition programme. For information about current exhibitions please see our What's On pages. At the same time most of our collections have been moved to the stores during this period. For information about these please see the relevant collections pages.

Find out more about the redevelopment

The Herbert includes an art gallery and museum, creative media studios, an arts information centre and a history centre for the city's archives. Our aim is to work with the people of
Coventry to explore and celebrate the creativity and cultural heritage of all of our
communities.

Getting Involved: A new Friends Organisation for The Herbert
If you'd like to have a direct impact on our work, why not become one of our 'friends'? To find out more, click here.

Coventry Collections is our new online catalogue of museum and archive collections. Find out about over 250000 items from The Herbert, Coventry Archives and Coventry Transport Museum.

Coventry Arts and Heritage is also responsible for two other sites in the city. These are the
Lunt Roman Fort and the Priory Visitor Centre and Undercroft.

This website aims to provide you with all the information you need to plan a visit. You can find out about our collections, exhibitions and events. There are pages about our learning and schools work, our work with communities, and the arts and media services available.

Watercolour of the Month
The bridge, which has fourteen arches, was built about 1490. It is named after Sir Richard Clopton, Lord Mayor of London, who arranged the finance for it to be built. It still carries the main road over the River Avon.

William Wells Quatremain (also spelled Quatremaine) was born in 1857 at Gypsy Hill, Upper Norwood, London. On the death of his father (an amateur painter) he moved in 1867 with his mother (a drawing master) to Stratford on Avon to be near her sister's family. William is first mentioned in the local paper there in 1884. He married in 1895.

Views of Stratford by him were commissioned in 1907 from him and published in a popular booklet entitled 'Shakespeare's Stratford-on-Avon' by J. Salmon, Art Printer, Sevenoaks. He exhibited nine paintings at the Royal Society of Birmingham Artists, between 1894 and 1907. He also exhibited annually at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford until 1926. Frances Countess of Warwick in 1911 commissioned 24 views of Warwick Castle from him. People remembered that he had a bicycle adapted to carry his paintbox, easel and stool.

Object of the Month
In 1939, Inge Sadan arrived in England with the Kindertransport to join her brother and sister who were already living in Coventry. The children could bring very few belongings with them and she carried this rucksack with her.

The Kindertransport was a rescue effort which brought Jewish children to Great Britain from Nazi Germany and other German occupied territories. Jews were suffering increasing incidents of violence and persecution under the Nazis and between 1938 and 1940, the Kindertransport helped approximately 10,000 children escape into Britain. The Movement for the Care of Children from Germany coordinated the British effort with the help of many organisations and individuals of different faiths.

Parents and guardians were not allowed to travel to Britain, so the children arrived alone and not knowing where or with whom they would be staying. Most children stayed with foster families while others stayed in hostels or on farms. After the war, many children discovered they were orphans because their parents had not survived the Holocaust. Inge and her siblings were exceptionally fortunate to be reunited with their parents.

The Herbert’s resident performance company Triangle is developing an original approach to Museum Theatre
The company’s latest project, The Last Women, is inspired by the crimes of passion and execution of Mary Ball: a ribbon weaver, from Bedworth hanged in Coventry in 1849 and Ruth Ellis: the last woman to be hanged in Britain in 1955. The project is touring to 7 cities nationally as it is developed.

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