Beetles from Plymouth City Museum’s Keys Collection. Artist Dail Behennah will be working with the museum’s natural history collection.

Museums in the southwest are to forge links and work with leading national artists thanks to a string of grants announced by Museums Libraries and Archives South West.

More than £150,000 is being handed to ten museums through the initiative, which is also supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

The grants are part of New Expressions, a major new programme that aims to open up new dialogues between audiences, contemporary artists and the wealth of historical material held in the region’s museums.

As reported by 24 Hour Museum last month, Arts Council Chairman Sir Christopher Frayling spoke at the Museums Association Conference in Liverpool, expressing how fruitful the collaborations between artists and museums could be, and how it could lead to potential promotion of the nation’s heritage and the arts.

“It’s unprecedented for museums and artists to work together on this kind of regional scale,” explained MLA South West Board of Directors and Chair of the Selection Panel, David Ball

Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum. The gallery’s front entrance grille was created by artist Alan Evans. For New Expressions, the artist Edmund de Waal will re-interpret Cheltenham’s Arts and Crafts Movement furniture collection.

“The energy generated by ten exciting and unusual projects happening simultaneously over the coming months is a mouth-watering prospect for existing and new audiences.”

Projects in the programme range from a surrealist exploration of the picture frame at Falmouth Art Gallery through a Darwin-inspired installation at Plymouth Museum to an intervention among the Arts and Crafts furniture displays at Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum.

“MLA South West and our predecessors have a 50-year track record of supporting quality and innovation in our region’s museums,” added David Ball. “We are pleased to be able to sign off our organisation’s legacy with a groundbreaking programme for our sector and its audiences.”

Artists and museum curators will be working on their projects this month with most work expected to be completed by March 2009.