From February next year, visitors to Tullie will be welcomed into the beautifully redeveloped entrance with a new café, shop, events space and an additional exhibition space on the ground floor, the Carlisle Gallery, which will reveal the hidden histories of this great Border city. For this redevelopment, Tullie has been working with a design team led by De Matos Ryan architects, who have recently worked on transforming the Young V&A.
The museum’s new Carlisle Gallery will showcase the rich and diverse history of Carlisle through its unique collections. Focusing on local stories, the gallery invites visitors to explore themes such as wild, social, industrial, and revolutionary.
Cultural identity and resilience are at the heart of the new Carlisle Gallery. Visitors can explore objects from the diverse communities that have called Carlisle home.
The gallery will also feature Faunus, a new work by Nicole Bishop, inspired by Cumbria Biodiversity Data Centre’s earliest record, from 1512.
Art will also extend out of the gallery into the new welcome area. Hold Fast, Stand Sure, I scream a revolution, a large-scale installation of ceramic mushrooms by Serena Korda will hang from the ceiling, stunning visitors as they enter. The work was acquired with support from the Arts Council England/ V&A Purchase Grant Fund, Art Fund, and the Henry Moore Foundation.
The revitalisation of the café and purpose-built shop provides a new experience for everyone—museum visitors, locals, and tourists. Both spaces are designed to complement the museum’s ethos of inclusivity, creativity, and sustainability, featuring locally sourced, bespoke products.
The shop will be curated much like the museum and galleries, representing local makers, producers and businesses with unique ranges exclusive to Tullie.
This approach extends into the transformed café, which will provide a destination dining experience in its own right. With its new elevated in-house food experience, the café will become a space where people meet, communicate, share stories and find inspiration. The café will also be available for private dining events and weddings, cementing its place as a key part of Carlisle’s hospitality scene.
Community is at the heart of the project. Properties on Castle Street, unused for years were transferred to Tullie from Cumberland Council, parts of which will form brand new spaces for the museum’s popular community programme.
Tullie’s iconic Gatehouse entrance building has received some attention alongside this work with the help of a grant from Historic England. The Grade I Listed building, a prominent part of Carlisle’s streetscape, was taken off the Heritage at Risk register following a full refurbishment.
This work is part of a comprehensive redevelopment plan that initially focuses on the museum’s welcome and social spaces. The next phase, which begins in late spring 2025, is set to modernise the 850sqm main first-floor gallery spaces and create new learning facilities.
While work on this second phase is ongoing, the museum has continued to welcome visitors and has recently opened a stunning new Sheila Fell exhibition. The exhibition is the first major retrospective in over 30 years, Cumberland on Canvas. Fell, from nearby Aspatria, is arguably one of the 20th century’s greatest landscape painters.
Her dark and evocative paintings of the Solway plain led LS Lowry to regard her as the greatest artist of her generation. Sheila Fell: Cumberland on Canvas runs until 16 March 2025 and brings together close to 100 works from private and public collections with the generous support of the Weston Loan Programme with Art Fund.
The redevelopment work has been made possible with funding by the UK Government, including support from the UK Government’s Town’s Fund and Future High Streets Fund.
It has been further supported by public funding from the HM Government administered by the Arts Council England. The café refurbishment is supported by the UK Government through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund.
Cumberland Council Cllr Anne Quilter, Portfolio holder for Vibrant and Healthy Places said, “Carlisle is being transformed by a series of projects that will support the economy and strengthen the city as our regional capital. Tullie is one of our main attractions and their exciting plans will provide a boost to our cultural offer. Providing lasting legacies for all to enjoy.”
Emmie Kell, Director of Museums and Cultural Property, Arts Council England, added, “We’re delighted to see the unveiling of the new entrance and additional exhibition space at Tullie House. It’s fantastic that the local community and visitors to the area will be able to enjoy finding out about the city’s cultural history through the museum’s collections in the new Carlisle Gallery. We’re also pleased to support Tullie House through our national portfolio programme for its programme of activity.”
For more information on the Tullie Museum, visit https://tullie.org.uk/.