Museums and galleries: The Bowes Museum

In recent years, The Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle has been host to some superb traveling exhibitions that has brought unique and diverse exhibitions of art and design to the North East.  Following the success of the Yves Saint Laurent: style is eternal and Robert Mapplethorpe: the magic in the muse exhibitions, the V&A organised exhibition Shoes: pleasure and pain opened last week. Featuring 200 pairs of historic and contemporary shoes, exploring 2,000 years of  footwear history, this is the only chance to see the exhibition outside of London and is well worth a visit.

The Bowes Museum standing collections have something of interest for all of our subject areas too including fine and decorative arts featuring El Greco, Goya and Turner, while you’ll also find fashion and textiles, glass, ceramics and metalwork. The silver swan is a staple of most visits if you can be there at 2pm. The Bowes Museum is also worth following on Twitter or Facebook in order to find out about upcoming exhibitions.

The cafe doesn’t disappoint either which always makes a gallery visit more pleasurable.