Plymouth’s fascinating new visitor attraction
Plymouth’s brand-new £46 million visitor attraction is now open from 10am to 5pm, Tuesday to Sunday - and it's well-worth a visit! The Box is the largest multi-disciplinary arts and heritage space to open in the UK in 2020. Originally three separate buildings, The Box’s ground-breaking design has completely transformed, extended and combined Plymouth’s former City Museum and Art Gallery, Central Library building and St Luke’s Church to create a cutting-edge, interactive cultural centre with 13 new galleries and exhibition spaces, a striking elevated archive, learning and research facilities and a brand-new public square.
Showcasing Plymouth’s heritage, the centre tells the city’s story from prehistoric times to the present day including its naval and wartime history, with exhibits drawn from archive material, as well as using modern media, interactive displays and contemporary art. With nine permanent galleries, plus two temporary exhibitions on three floors there is definitely something for everyone in this amazing new venue – not forgetting the life-size woolly mammoth!
One of the highlights is the Mayflower 400: Legend & Legacy exhibition which runs until September 2021. This major exhibition has been co-curated with the Wampanoag Advisory Committee to Plymouth 400 in the USA. Tribal scholars and educators have worked in partnership with curators at The Box to present a Native American view of English colonisation and the exhibition acknowledges conflict with Native America and the impact of colonisation on the indigenous population using objects, images and ideas to explore early English attempts to colonise America. It is an epic journey and story of survival and imagination told through objects, images and ideas from both sides of the Atlantic, featuring an exceptional and rare selection of objects such as books, engravings and artefacts.
Making It is an international contemporary art exhibition featuring newly commissioned works by Antony Gormley, Portuguese artist Leonor Antunes and Brazilian artist Alexandre da Cunha. Don’t miss the new permanent fused glass window by Leonor Antunes in the newly converted exhibition space at St Luke’s.
The Media Lab is another fascinating area with a mock TV studio where visitors can take the chance to present the news, as well as an enthralling floor-to-ceiling Big Screen covering three walls of the gallery with moving archive material showing events from the city’s past.
In addition to enormous ship figureheads hanging above the entrance and a giant ship’s fender, the airy, contemporary lobby area houses the Kitchen & Bar with a range of tempting refreshments on offer, and a well-stocked gift shop. There is so much to take in at The Box you’ll probably decide you can’t take it in with one visit and will need to come back again quite soon!
Free admission is by advance ticket only at www.theboxplymouth.com. You can book for October now and tickets for November will be released on Monday 19 October. The Mayflower 400:Legend & Legacy exhibition runs from 29 September 2020 – 18 September 2021 and costs £5 (free for Plymouth residents & under 18s).