Art galleries are the great levellers of our time. Whether you’re a tourist discovering a city, a parent trying to entertain small children, or a big-time art-lover, everyone is welcome at an art gallery. Luckily for the people of Birmingham, the city’s champion gallery is set to finally reopen after four long years of refurbishment.
After closing in 2020 for the pandemic, Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery decided it was not-like-other-museums and did not reopen with the rest of the country. Instead, it opted for a four-year closure in order to facilitate some maintenance and building works. It has periodically been used for pop-up exhibitions in the interim, but 2024 will see it return to former glories.
The reopening will happen incrementally, beginning on February 10 in the Gas Hall with the exhibition ‘Victorian Radicals’. On its return from a successful tour of the US, the exhibit spotlights multiple cultural movements from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The museum’s Curator of Fine Art Victoria Osborne said: ‘We’re excited to celebrate the homecoming of Birmingham’s Pre-Raphaelite and Arts and Crafts collections by opening Victorian Radicals here in the city.’
‘The “Victorian Radicals” believed that art and creativity could change the world and be a real force for good in society. The questions they explored in their lives and work are as relevant today as they were 150 years ago.’
From there, spaces throughout the museum will open back up gradually, with plans to have much of it free to roam by September. Most importantly, the gift shop will be back by summer.
Hopefully this return will signal a new era for Brummie art, and show visitors that the city really does have more to it than ‘Peaky Blinders’ and a few decent football teams.
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