The museum/gallery is run by Birmingham Museums Trust, the largest independent museums trust in the United Kingdom, which also runs eight other museums around the city.[4] Entrance to the Museum and Art Gallery is free, but some major exhibitions in the Gas Hall incur an entrance fee.
The Museums Act 1845 "[empowered] boroughs with a population of 10,000 or more to raise a 1/2d for the establishment of museums."[5] In 1864, the first public exhibition room, was opened when the Society and other donors presented 64 pictures as well as the Sultanganj Buddha to Birmingham Council and these were housed in the Free Library building but, due to lack of space, the pictures had to move to Aston Hall.[6]Joseph Henry Nettlefold (1827–1881) bequeathed twenty-five pictures by David Cox to Birmingham Art Gallery on the condition it opened on Sundays.[7]
Industrial Gallery, the original part of the Art Gallery
In June 1880, local artist Allen Edward Everitt accepted the post of honorary curator of the Free Art Gallery, a municipal institution which was the forerunner of the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.[8]
Jesse Collings, Mayor of Birmingham 1878–79, was responsible for free libraries in Birmingham and was the original proponent of the Birmingham Art Gallery. A gift of £10,000 (equivalent to £1,100,000 in 2020) made by Sir Richard and George Tangye started a new drive for an art gallery and, in 1885, following other donations and £40,000 from the council, the Prince of Wales officially opened the new gallery on Saturday 28 November 1885.[6][9] The Museum and Art Gallery occupied an extended part of the Council House above the new offices of the municipal Gas Department (which in effect subsidised the venture thus circumventing the Public Libraries Act 1850 which limited the use of public funds on the arts). The building was designed by Yeoville Thomason.[10] The metalwork for the new building (and adjoining Council House) was by the Birmingham firm of Hart, Son, Peard & Co. and extended to both the interior and exterior including the distinctive cast-iron columns in the main gallery space for the display of decorative art.[11] The lofty portico, surmounted by a pediment by Francis John Williamson, representing an allegory of Birmingham contributing to the fine arts, was together with the clock-tower considered the "most conspicuous features" of the exterior upon its opening.[12] By 1900 the collection, especially its contemporary British holdings, was deemed by the Magazine of Art to be "one of the finest and handsomest" in Britain.[13]
Until 1946, when property taxes were voted towards acquisitions, the museum relied on the generosity of private individuals.[6]John Feeney provided £50,000 to provide a further gallery.
Seven galleries had to be rebuilt after being bombed in 1940.[6] Immediately after World War II "Mighty Mary" Mary Woodall (1901–1988) was appointed keeper of art under director, Trenchard Cox. Woodall and Cox, through their links to the London art world, were able to attract exhibitions, much publicity and donations to the gallery. In 1956, Woodall replaced Cox when the latter became Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum.[14] John Woodward (1921–1988) was Keeper of Art from 1956 to 1964.
The Round Room with Jacob Epstein's The Archangel Lucifer
The main entrance is located in Chamberlain Square below the clock-tower known locally as "Big Brum". The entrance hall memorial reads 'By the gains of Industry we promote Art'.[6] The Extension Block has entrances via the Gas Hall in Edmund Street and Great Charles Street. Waterhall, the original gas department, has its own entrance on Edmund Street.
In October 2010, the Waterhall closed as a BM&AG gallery as a result of a £1.5m cut to Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery's budget in 2010–11. The last BM&AG exhibition that took place in the Waterhall at that time was the Steve McCurry retrospective that ran from 26 June to 17 October 2010. The Waterhall and the Gas Hall have reopened for exhibitions throughout the year.
Due to the global pandemic, the museum closed in October 2020. The museum remained closed throughout 2021 as part of a project to rewire the Council complex that houses the museum. The museum partially reopened in April 2022 with a number of pop-up exhibitions. It will close again in December 2022 ahead of a full reopening expected in 2024.[15]
The Art Gallery is most noted for its extensive collections of paintings ranging from the 14th to the 21st century. They include works by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the world's largest collection of works by Edward Burne-Jones. Notable painters in oil include the following:
In November 2014, a dedicated gallery was opened to display the Staffordshire Hoard. Discovered in the nearby village of Hammerwich in 2009, it was the largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold ever found.
In respect of local and industrial history, the tower of the Birmingham HP Sauce factory was a famous landmark alongside the Aston Expressway which was demolished in the summer of 2007.[31] The giant logo from the top of the tower is now in the collection of the Museum.
The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology on Beaumont Street, Oxford, England, is Britain's first public museum. Its first building was erected in 1678–1683 to house the cabinet of curiosities that Elias Ashmole gave to the University of Oxford in 1677. It is also the world's second university museum, after the establishment of the Kunstmuseum Basel in 1661 by the University of Basel.
Sir John Everett Millais, 1st Baronet was an English painter and illustrator who was one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He was a child prodigy who, aged eleven, became the youngest student to enter the Royal Academy Schools. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was founded at his family home in London, at 83 Gower Street. Millais became the most famous exponent of the style, his painting Christ in the House of His Parents (1849–50) generating considerable controversy, and he produced a picture that could serve as the embodiment of the historical and naturalist focus of the group, Ophelia, in 1851–52.
David Cox was an English landscape painter, one of the most important members of the Birmingham School of landscape artists and an early precursor of Impressionism.
Thinktank, Birmingham is a science museum in Birmingham, England. Opened in 2001, it is part of Birmingham Museums Trust and is located within the Millennium Point complex on Curzon Street, Digbeth.
William Jabez Muckley was a noted English artist who was born at Wordsley, Kingswinford, in Staffordshire. He was the eldest of the seven children of Jabez Muckley who was a glass artisan.
The Lowry is a theatre and gallery complex at Salford Quays, Salford, Greater Manchester, England. It is named after the early 20th-century painter L. S. Lowry, known for his paintings of industrial scenes in North West England. The complex opened on 28 April 2000 and was officially opened on 12 October 2000 by Queen Elizabeth II.
Eileen Cooper is a British artist, known primarily as a painter and printmaker.
Ged Quinn is an English artist and musician. He studied at the Ruskin School of Art and St Anne's College in Oxford, the Slade School of Art in London, the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. He now lives and works in the UK.
Sheffield, England, has a large population of amateur, working and professional visual artists and artworks.
Samuel Lines was an English designer, painter and art teacher, and an early member of the Birmingham School of landscape painters.
Emma Sandys was a British Pre-Raphaelite painter.
Ann Sumner is an art historian, exhibition curator, author and former museum director. She is currently Visiting Professor at Manchester Metropolitan University and Chair of the Methodist Modern Art Collection.
Birmingham Museums Trust is the largest independent charitable trust of museums in the United Kingdom. It runs nine museum sites across the city of Birmingham, including Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (BMAG) and Thinktank, Birmingham Science Museum, with a total of more than 1.1 million visits per year.
Mary Woodall CBE also known as "Mighty Mary" (1901–1988) was a British art historian, museum director, and Thomas Gainsborough scholar.
Stephen Wildman is Professor of the History of Art at the University of Lancaster and Director of the Ruskin Library and Research Centre.
Carol McNicoll is an English studio potter whose work is mainly decorative slipcast ware, she is credited with helping to transform the British ceramics scene in the late 1970s.
Reuben Colley is a British representational painter primarily recognised for his "gritty" city-scapes and parkland scenes depicting his home town of Birmingham, England. His work is included in the collection of the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and private collections both nationally and internationally.
Barrie Cook was a British abstract artist who lived and worked on The Lizard in Cornwall, England.
Fanny Eaton was a Jamaican-born artist's model and domestic worker. She is best known as a model for the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and their circle in England between 1859 and 1867. Her public debut was in Simeon Solomon's painting The Mother of Moses, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1860. She was also featured in works by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, Joanna Mary Boyce, Rebecca Solomon, and others.
↑ Fisher, Mark (2005). "Barber Institute of Fine Arts". Britain's Best Museums and Galleries: From the Greatest Collections to the Smallest Curiosities. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. pp.205–207. ISBN0-14-101960-3.
1 2 3 4 5 'Economic and Social History: Social History since 1815', A History of the County of Warwick: VII The City of Birmingham (1964), pp. 223–45. Feeney (accessed: 30 January 2008).
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Phidias Showing the Frieze of the Parthenon to his Friends by Lawrence Alma-Tadema
Birmingham from the Dome of St Philip's Church by Samuel Lines
