Voices: introducing our 2025 programme
Highlights to look out for in the first half of 2025
This year, we’re celebrating the voices that give English rural life its meaning: from untold stories in our collections, to new perspectives and insights from our community.
Alongside our everyday experiences—whether meeting friends in the café or garden, exploring the galleries, or enjoying a day out for all the family—here’s a roundup of special events, exhibitions and news that you can get excited about in the months ahead.
Forty Farms: a countryside blockbuster
Our major 2025 exhibition highlights the work of award-winning photographer Amy Bateman. Amy spent 2020 documenting the lives of rural workers across forty farms in Cumbria and the Lake District, capturing personal stories and farming challenges in some of England’s most beautiful landscapes.
Photographs from twenty of the farms that Amy visited will be displayed throughout the museum garden in our exhibition, Forty Farms.
There’s also a Forty Farms–themed trail for you to enjoy through our galleries, highlighting the links between our displays and collections and the work of the featured farms.
Charles Hasler: the face behind the typeface
You’ve probably never heard of Charles Hasler, but you may recognise his best-known work. Hasler was an influential graphic designer and typographer who worked for the British Government during the Second World War. He designed for rural education campaigns like ‘Dig for Victory’ and ‘Grow Your Own’ that still resonate today in popular culture.
Our new Staircase Hall exhibition, Charles Hasler: A Mid-Century Graphic Designer and Collector (4 Feb – 30 May), uses materials from the University of Reading’s Special Collections to present Hasler’s designs and the highlights of his personal typography and design collections, which he amassed throughout his lifetime for teaching purposes.
For readers who won’t be able to make it to Reading, follow the University’s Special Collections on Bluesky or Instagram, where they’ll be sharing more about Hasler’s life and work.
Learn more about Charles Hasler: A Mid-Century Graphic Designer and Collector.
Free monthly gallery tours
Get a fresh perspective on the stories of our collections each month by joining us for our monthly tours.
The tours are led by curator Dr Ollie Douglas with a different special guest each time. Last month we were joined by James Norman (a local organic farmer and former Private Eye contributor) who took us through the galleries while sharing insights into contemporary farming and our ever-changing relationship to the land. For our next tour on 11 February, we’ll be joined by PhD researcher Tom Brookes, whose work explores the pressures and challenges that led to widespread farming protests across the UK.
We’re making a podcast
We’re a small museum with a big digital hoofprint footprint.
In the coming months, we’re thrilled to reveal that we’re piloting a new way for you to explore the story of rural England: Absolute Units, an official MERL podcast.
In each podcast, our hosts Ollie Douglas (MERL Curator) and Katie Bergen (Digital Engagement Officer) will speak with special guests, illuminating different parts of English countryside history and the stories of our collections.
We’re beginning with four episodes that roll out from the end of February, with a roster of guests including:
- Adam Koszary (social media and content strategist; formerly MERL social media manager from 2013-2019, father of the absolute unit and chicken in trousers)
- Hannah Lyons (curator of the University of Reading Art Collection)
- Shweta Ghosh (documentary filmmaker)
- Alice Mauchline (agriculturalist)
The podcast has been made possible through the support of Arts Council England and the extraordinary work of students from the University of Reading’s Department of Film, Theatre and Television: Lewis Hall, Lindsey Campbell, Matthew Cronk, Olivia Hills, Monty Rice, Charnta Anderson, Sahil Hansraj, Abeer Mohamed, and Tai Dawson.
We’re excited to share the podcasts with you and get your feedback, and eager to explore what we can do to keep the pod going in a way that’s both delightful and sustainable. Watch this space!
Absolute Units launches 25 February 2025. See you in the airwaves, wherever you get your podcasts.
All Roads: stories of migration to Reading
Textiles hold a huge amount of personal significance in our lives. Our community display All Roads: Migration Stories highlights the personal stories of local women who have migrated to Reading, displaying the story of their journeys alongside the textiles they brought with them.
All Roads: Migration Stories (14 Jan – 30 May) was made in partnership with local arts organisation Jelly. We’ll be sharing more about the display on our blog very soon.
Pandora Unboxed
One of the star artworks of the University of Reading Art Collection is John Dickson Batten’s 1913 depiction of the Greek myth of Pandora. The artwork was exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in the same year and then came to University College Reading (now University of Reading) soon after.
In Pandora Unboxed, local young artists were invited to respond to the painting and to Pandora’s significance. The artworks they produced reveal how this ancient myth endures and resonates with people today.
A Closer Look – online art history talks
For even more from the University Art Collection, look out for their free series of monthly art history talks (A Closer Look) that you can join online.
Each talk features curator Hannah Lyons and special guests reflecting on artworks from the collection. Each guest brings their unique expertise to the Art Collection’s contents, ensuring you’ll learn something new every time.
Thanks for reading our round-up of what’s coming up in the months ahead! For more of our work and team, follow us on social media or plan a visit to see the museum in person. We’re just a 25-minute train ride from London Paddington, and forever a few clicks away on your desktop or phone.
If you’d like to support our work, a £5 donation goes a long way in making possible everything we do. Thank you from everyone here at The MERL.