Ulster Belfast

The Ulster Museum features many changing exhibitions throughout the year. From science and nature to art and history, there is something for everyone.

The Ulster Museum is open 10am - 5pm, Tuesday - Sunday. Closed Mondays (excluding NI Bank Holidays).

Current and upcoming exhibitions are below:

Framed: People & Place in Irish Photography

Photographs capture a moment in time in exact likeness, allowing us to see what people in the past saw – or what others wanted them to see. In doing so, they enable history to speak to us directly and with great clarity.

The Ulster Museum’s collections of historic photographs date from the 1850s and comprise many thousands of images relating to the history, topography and personalities of Ireland. This exhibition concentrates on the twin themes of people and place to illustrate the range and depth of these collections and how the photographers they represent framed and shaped our view of the past.

Elements

From Actinium
to Zirconium, it’s time to get switched on to science with a journey
along the periodic table! Get set for an odyssey that will take you from
the rocks beneath your feet to the most distant and ancient reaches of
the Universe.

From microscopic viruses to vast galaxies – and you
too – all are made from elements. In this new exhibition, find out
where the elements were made, how they occur naturally, what they look
like, how we use them, and why they can be dangerous!

The National Gallery Masterpiece Tour: Rembrandt’s Self Portrait at the Age of 63

Friday 15 January 2016 to Sunday 13 March 2016
The Ulster Museum is the first venue to host Rembrandt’s Self Portrait at the Age of 63, a much-loved work from the National Gallery Collection in London, as part of the UK Masterpiece Tour. Rembrandt (1606–1669) is perhaps the best-loved and most admired painter of the seventeenth century. No artist before Rembrandt, and only a very few since, have made self-portraiture such a significant part of their life’s work. Self Portrait at the Age of 63, painted in the final year of the artist’s life, is among the very last works he finished.

Special Exhibition Tours

Thursday 21 January, Thursday 18 February & Thursday 10 March, 1.00pm to 2.00pm
Anne Stewart, Curator of Fine Art, will lead public tours of Meeting Rembrandt giving an insight into this special exhibition.

Order and Revolution

Friday 5 February 2016 to Monday 2 May 2016
This exhibition highlights the period between 1740 and 1840, which is generally considered a ‘golden age’ in British and Irish art. Some of the finest portraits in the Ulster Museum collection, by Reynolds and Gainsborough, are shown with landscape painting, sculpture and furniture, to illustrate the order and formal elegance of the period.

This exhibition charts the development of twentieth-century British art, with a particular focus on the post-war period. The title Bare Life refers to the often uncompromising and experimental way in which a number of artists during this period responded to the human figure, from Walter Sickert and Francis Bacon to Gilbert and George and Matt Collishaw. The exhibition includes an important recent acquisition, Red Conservatory by John Walker.

The BP Portrait Award 2015

Friday 11 March 2016 to Sunday 12 June 2016
Selected from a record-breaking 2, 748 entries by artists from 92 countries around the world, the BP Portrait Award 2015 represents the very best in contemporary portrait painting. From parents to poseurs, figurative nudes to famous faces and expressive sketches to piercing photo-realism, the variety and vitality of this touring exhibition from the National Portrait Gallery in London means it is not to be missed.

Exploring the ways in which seventeenth-century artists used light and shadow to create a sense of immediacy and realism in their paintings, this exhibition will consider how these effects are used in Dutch, Italian and Flemish historic paintings in the Ulster Museum collection and encourage new ways of looking at art.