Herry Perry's father did not approve of her going to art school and it was only after his death in 1924 that she was able to enrol at the Central School of Arts and Crafts  where she acquired many different skills. Of these, wood engraving was "her first love". She quickly became a very talented engraver and for years designed her own witty Christmas cards.

In March, we had Herry Perry on the Post which led to the discovery that she is the subject of a book by Julian Francis published last year. As the Creative Review said, it "shines a light on [her] illustrations and engravings, which, though largely forgotten, adorned hundreds of walls, signs, books and cards in the early to mid twentieth century". This is Herry Perry (1897-1962) in 1935/36 painting her Noah's Ark mural for RMS Queen Mary. She disliked her name, Anne Erica, and chose to be called Heather - Erica is Latin for heather - which was then shortened to rhyme catchily with her surname.

Beamish, The Living Museum of the North, is the most-visited attraction in County Durham. It is mostly made up of buildings which have been moved to the open-air museum  and are there to be experienced,  not simply looked at. Although they illustrate the region's industrial and social history, the recently created 1950s town also brings to life the period background of many of the mid-century Persephone novels.

Chapter in Cardiff one was of the first art centres in the UK, bringing together a "multi-artform programme" under one roof and centred around an open, accessible space. The building was previously Canton High School (1907) before the arts centre opened in 1971 and it was remodelled twenty years ago.

Perth Museum in Scotland is housed in the former Perth City Hall (1911) which played host to "political rallies, temperance meetings, exhibitions, indoor roller-skating, magic shows, concerts, anti-slavery lectures, operas, and plays". The building became vacant in 2005 and was transformed by Mecanoo into an elegant museum which opened in 2024. The museum's centrepiece is the Stone of Destiny (aka the Stone of Scone), a "powerful symbol of Scotland".

A visit to Compton Verney includes not only exhibitions, the largest collection of British Folk Art, and the outstanding Marx-Lambert Collection of popular art, but also the chance to see inside a Grade I listed country mansion built in 1714 with later extensions by James Gibbs and alterations by Robert Adam, and to admire the 120 acres of classic English parkland designed in the 1790s by 'Capability' Brown.

This week we look at the finalists for the Art Fund Museum of the Year award, the winner of which will be announced on 26th June. They are a diverse mix but have an interesting - unofficial - connecting theme in that they are all in repurposed buildings. This sort of adaptive reuse is slowly gathering pace in the UK and, given the shockingly high number of good but empty buildings, the potential is enormous. The Golden Thread Gallery on Queen Street in Belfast is in the former 1930s Corporation Gas Showroom.