Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery

Other names: Corporation Art Gallery (from 1867), City Art Gallery
Foundation date: 19 July 1881

Active: 1867 -

Function: Art gallery

History or description: In 1860 there was a proposal to include a 'Museum and Gallery of Art' in the Central Library, but this was not immediately realised. In 1864 the painter Edward Coleman offered a work to the proposed Gallery and in 1865 the Birmingham Society of Artists (later RBSA) made a permanent loan of paintings to the Gallery. A room was secured in the Free Library and the Corporation Art Gallery opened in August 1867, with a permanent collection of fifty-six works. 34,560 people visited in the first five months and 200,000 in 1868 when a loan exhibition of works from the South Kensington Museum (later V&A) was held.

In the 1870s the Gallery raised money and bought metal work, jewellery, textile and glass objects from South Kensington to enlarge the collection. In 1875 Mr. Joseph Chamberlain (Mayor) donated £1000 for the purchase of industrial art objects and the Gallery acquired the 'Willian Bragg collection of precious stones.'

The following year approximately 1000 specimens of arms and armour dating from the medieval to the modern period were donated to the Gallery from the Guardians of the Proof House. By this date (1876) the Gallery was attracting around 400,000 visitors a year.

In 1877 the Midland Institute and the Free Libraries were extended and the rooms used for the Gallery was closed. The collections were moved to rooms in Paradise Street. A year later these rooms were also closed and the collection was moved to Aston Hall. The Free Libraries Committee considered erecting a more permanent home for the collection.

Sir Richard and Mr. George Tangye offered £5000 towards the acquisition of works providing the Corporation agreed to erect a permanent gallery in the centre of the city and their gift was matched by further donations. A total of £23,000 was raised and a site at the back of the Council House was chosen.

The architect of the new gallery was Mr. H. Yeoville Thomason who also designed the Council House. The foundation stone was laid on the 19 July, 1881. The inauguration ceremony took place on the 28 November 1885. The gallery included an entrance hall, vestibule, round picture gallery, an Industrial Museum with upper side galleries, a long picture gallery and two smaller galleries.

In 1905 the galleries were extended to designs made by the architects H. V. Ashley and Winton Newman. The new galleries were opened in July 1912 [A. Bensley, 'The Corporation Museum and Art Gallery' (1913), pp. 1-15].

A. Bensley described the gallery's attitude towards loan exhibitions in 1913 as follows: 'ever since the opening of the Gallery, until want of space made it impossible, it was the custom of the committee to hold annual loan exhibitions of pictures and other works of art.' [Bensley, 'The Corporation Museum and Art Gallery' (1913)]

Citing this record

'Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery', Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851-1951, University of Glasgow History of Art and HATII, online database 2011 [http://sculpture.gla.ac.uk/view/organization.php?id=msib4_1207132640, accessed 10 Jun 2023]