News

A mysterious coin once used to pay a bus fare in Leeds was minted by an ancient civilisation more than 2,000 years ago, it has been revealed.

The astonishing discovery, handed to an unwitting local bus driver in the 1950s, was produced by Carthaginians, part of the Phoenician culture, in the Spanish city of Cadiz during the 1^st century BC and has now kindly been donated to Leeds Museums and Galleries.

Flamboyant floral creations have burst into life this spring in a new exhibition paying tribute to the unique beauty of the natural world.

Botanically Beautiful: Art and Design Inspired by Nature at Lotherton explores how colourful depictions of flowers, fruits, leaves and trees have taken root in the worlds of art, design and fashion, inspiring a vast array of eye-catching works across history.

A trailblazing female wrestler and a famous gorilla are among the enthralling Leeds stories being brought into focus in a picture-perfect new exhibition.

In the Picture at Abbey House Museum features a selection of objects, thought-provoking paintings and photographs drawn from the vast Leeds Museums and Galleries collection.

A trio of up-and-coming Leeds artists have been given a huge boost thanks an innovative scheme aimed at shaping the city’s emerging talent.

Sculptors Elrick Boldy, Ewan Summerton and Iona Ogilvy-Stuart were this week announced as recipients of the 2026 Accelerator Bursary, a joint initiative funded by Leeds Art Fund and delivered by Leeds Art Gallery and Assembly House Leeds.

An incredible collection of handmade models crafted in secret by a local enthusiast has revealed one man’s fascinating lifelong love for the buses of Yorkshire.

The new display at Leeds City Museum gives visitors a chance to see a selection of the vast array of replicas created by physicist Dr Gordon Brooke, which were found in a box room by his astonished family following his death at the age of 82.

Ancient artefacts unearthed and collected during the construction of a huge Leeds transport project have been preserved at a Leeds museum.

Spanning more than six thousand years of the city’s history, the remarkable archive includes a beautifully preserved prehistoric arrowhead, a Bronze Age axe, medieval pottery and a 300-year-old pair of nutcrackers.

Plans for a tribute to a pioneering 19^th century British locomotive driver who was laid to rest in Leeds are gathering steam following a chance discovery at a local museum.

During recent renovation work at Leeds Industrial Museum in Armley, curators happened upon the beautifully carved gravestone of Robert Morrow, more than 160 years after his death in nearby New Wortley.

Poignant festive messages inscribed on biscuits by soldiers and sent back home from the front lines of the First World War have been revealed in Leeds.

The fragile vintage snacks, more than a century old, were originally issued to servicemen as a durable emergency ration but were reputedly so unpalatable, they were instead repurposed as a humorous way of staying in touch with loved ones over Christmas.

Art-lovers in Leeds have the incredible opportunity to hang a work by one of the 20th century’s most influential artists over their mantelpiece this Christmas.

Henri Matisse’s eye-catching The Dancer (1949) is among the beautiful pieces available to loan as part of Leeds Art Gallery’s unique Picture Library lending scheme, the selection weekend for which runs this week until Sunday, November 30.

Stunning images of nature captured by renowned contemporary artists will shed new light on our relationship with the wonderful world of plants.

Plant Dreaming opens at Leeds Art Gallery today (Nov 14, 2025) and explores a number of imaginative, alternative perspectives on plants, fungi, and our interconnected planet.

A captivating exhibition will shed new light on the life and work of renowned Leeds artist John Atkinson Grimshaw.

Grimshaw’s ‘moonlights’, as the artist called them, including depictions of Boar Lane and Park Row, will feature in Don’t Let’s Ask For the Moon: Nocturnes and Atkinson Grimshaw, which opens at Leeds Art Gallery this November.

Fascinating new illustrations reveal how a Saxon pendant unearthed in Leeds once looked as the ancient treasure is displayed for the first time in more than 1,200 years.

The beautiful, early medieval pectoral cross has gone on display at Leeds City Museum alongside hand drawn images showing how it could have appeared when it was possibly worn around the neck of a church official in the eighth century.