Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery

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Industrial Gallery, the original part of the Art Gallery

Opened in 1885 as an art gallery, Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery (BM&AG), in Birmingham, England, has a collection of international importance covering fine art, ceramics, metalwork, jewellery, archaeology, ethnography, local and industrial history. It includes a vast amount of first-class work by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the largest collection of works by Edward Burne-Jones in the world.

The Museum and Art Gallery occupies an extended part of the Council House built less than a decade after the original Council House (subsidised by the corporation's Gas Department to circumvent the Public Libraries and Museums Act which limited the use of public funds on the arts) and, via an elaborate archway (internally a corridor), much of the 1911-1919 Council House Extension block. The main entrance is located in Chamberlain Square below the clock tower. The Extension Block has entrances via the Gas Hall (Edmund Street) and Great Charles Street. Waterhall (the old gas department) has its own entrance on Edmund Street.

Entrance to the Museum and Art Gallery is free, but some major exhibitions in the Gas Hall incur an entrance fee.

BM&AG is managed by Birmingham City Council.

Community Museums

BM&AG also has many branch museums (some closed in the Winter) in historic buildings:

Aston Hall, in Aston, built 1618 - 1635
Blakesley Hall, in Yardley, a Tudor house
Museum of the Jewellery Quarter, Hockley (open all year)
Sarehole Mill, in Hall Green, a water mill
Soho House, in Handsworth, home of Matthew Boulton with exhibitions on the Lunar Society
Weoley Castle (ruins), in Weoley Castle

The Science Museum, on Newhall Street from 1951 - 2001, is now an independent museum and science attraction with an admission fee in the Thinktank.

Sources

All About Victoria Square, Joe Holyoak, The Victorian Society Birmingham Group, ISBN 0-901657-14-X
By the Gains of Industry - Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery 1885-1985, Stuart Davies, ISBN 0-7093-0131-6
[Images of England - details from listed building text]

External links

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