The V&A will create a new gallery of Buddhist sculpture with its DCMS Wolfson grant. 18th century Buddha courtesy the V&A

£4 million in grants for museums and galleries across England has been announced in the annual funding round from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Wolfson Foundation.

The grants, announced by Culture Minister Margaret Hodge on August 30, will go to improve displays and visitor experiences at 43 museums and galleries, ranging from the local to the national institution.

“Once again the DCMS Wolfson Fund is providing support for museums and galleries from all regions of England,” said Hodge.

“This year’s grants go to an imaginative array of projects in national institutions, university collections and well-loved local museums and galleries. This funding will give visitors the best possible experience of some wonderful collections.”

In the capital, the Museum of London will be able to create a major new exhibition about Londoners from 1950 to the present (£70,000); the Courtauld Institute will improve its entrance (£40,000); and a grant of £300,000 will go towards a new gallery of Buddhist sculpture at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

New Walk Museum will receive £145,000. Courtesy the museum

Two of the more unusual projects that have received funding are a 3D ‘bio wall’ dedicated to the natural world at Tyne & Wear’s Great North Museum project (£200,000), and the conservation and re-hang of some 18th century ‘mobile’ Chinese wallpaper at Harewood House (£83,300).

Well deserved updates will be made to the room where Leicester’s dinosaurs live at the New Walk Museum (£145,000), and Norwich Castle’s Norfolk Polar Bear and other mammals will be redisplayed (£60,000).

Tullie House in Cumbria will be able to carry out work on its rare Amati violin and interpretation display (£8,300) and The Tank Museum at Bovington has £100,000 to play with in its major refurbishment project.

While the round of government grants, now in its sixth year, is welcomed by the country’s museums and galleries, trepidation still hangs in the air as severe cuts are due to come into force in Heritage Lottery and Arts Council funding.

The main reason for this is money being diverted for the Olympics – the HLF has lost £233m to the Olympic fund up to 2012.

Lottery grants for projects exceeding £5 million have been slashed from £80 million in 2006/07 to half that in 2007/08, and to £20 million in 2008/09. Big handouts have helped projects like the £10m York Minster restoration this year, but commentators say hard decisions will have to be made over future applications of the same significance. The HLF budget for smaller projects has also been reduced.

A full list of the museums and galleries to benefit from the DCMS Wolfson funding this August can be found on the DCMS website