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Birmingham museum and art gallery.

eric i have asked myself that question so many times over various buildings....and i still dont know the answer...
 
guilbert53 said:
I have said many times on these forums that when I moved to Birmingham in about 1980 the city was dying.

Many of the traditional industries were closing and factories were being abandoned. The canals had been abandoned and the areas alongside them were mostly a dump. We had the Handsworth riots and the British Leyland strikes. Many people in other parts of the country thought of Birmingham as a "joke" city (I know that because that is what people in London where I lived thought of Birmingham). It still has NOT fully shaken off that negative image.

But every major city needs income to pay for all the services the city provides.

At the moment it seems to me that Birmingham Council is pretty much broke and cannot afford to do many of the things it would like to do.

The only way to change that is to build more office blocks and encourage companies to relocate here, and for people to come and live and work here.

These companies will pay various taxes to have their offices in the city, and the people who work in them pay council tax on their homes in the city, and use local facilities like shops and pubs and restaurants to keep the economy active.

Without these new developments (be they office blocks, apartments, shopping centres, updating New Street station or laying down tram tracks) they city would just be living in the past and slowly dying.

A few months ago HSBC bank moved their UK headquarters, and many of their London staff, from London to new offices on Broad St (opposite the new library).

They would not have done that if they had not felt the city was being improved and moderized. It would be very hard for them to encourage their staff to move from London if the city was still like it was from the 1980s (most of my workmates said I was mad when I said I was moving from London to Birmingham in 1980).

You can "praise" Digbeth / Deritend all you like, but most of the area is a dump. I walk round Birmingham a lot taking photographs and one of the most unpleasant parts of Birmingham to walk round is Digbeth / Deritend.

Many old abandoned factories, lots of scruffy surface car parks (where you park on dirt), horrible car repair garages under the railway arches, everywhere cars parked on pavements, rubbish everywhere (the council rarely send in cleaners), cracked paving slabs and so on. It is a horrible area.

The area will improve when (if) HS2 is built, as some of these abandoned factories are done up, and hopefully the council start to take more care of the area. It will also improve when the old Wholesale Market site is developed.

Have a look at the cities that are growing all over the world, they have office blocks and skyscrapers everywhere. You MUST bring new business to a city, if not it dies.

If you don't improve a city then all the people with skill and talent go and live in another city, or even country, and that leaves Birmingham as a city that will just slowly die.

Every city develops and grows because of what it produces or provides (Sheffield and steel, Liverpool and their port, Manchester and their cotton/linen trade and so on). Birmingham had the canals, and their "thousand trades" but they have long gone so it must either reinvent itself or die as a city.

Other cities like Manchester, Sheffield, Liverpool etc are having to reinvent themselves as their "core" business went away, Birmingham must also do the same or it will fall behind these other cities. In fact I think Birmingham is already falling behind Manchester as the "second city". They have many new office blocks and other modern buildings, they have the "Media City" area and the BBC reporting from their every day, they have two major world famous Premier League football clubs and so on.

So for Birmingham to keep up all these new developments in the city are vital for the future of the city.
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That seems rich coming from possibly one from one of the ugliest cities in Gt Britain
 
and the most crime ridden and London as certainly had it's share of riots and strikes ! But what as all this to do with the Art Gallery, the title of the Thread ? Eric
 
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I think the pedestrian diversion around Eden Place and Edmund Street ends tomorrow. Although until today you could access the Chamberlain Square main entrance from Victoria Square.

Paradise Birmingham haven't tweeted about the situation from the 29th October 2019.

This was their pinned tweet on Twitter.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1181219865337745408
 
Victoria Square to Chamberlain Square is open up again past BM & AG. New paving. Be careful not to trip as you leave the old Victoria Square paving for the new Chamberlain Square paving. Still a lot of temporary fencing around for Paradise Birmingham.

 
Not sure where to put this, but tonight on BBC4, there is episode 2 of the new series of Britains Lost Masterpieces, where two pictures , one before unattributed, at the art Galery are discussed. will presumably be later on iplayer
 
mikejee said:
Not sure where to put this, but tonight on BBC4, there is episode 2 of the new series of Britains Lost Masterpieces, where two pictures , one before unattributed, at the art Galery are discussed. will presumably be later on iplayer
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thanks mike just tuned in my tv ready for 9pm
 
Fantastic photos, I loved the steam weekends at the museum. I did managed to get a ride on the Foden steam waggon one year.
 
mikejee said:
Not sure where to put this, but tonight on BBC4, there is episode 2 of the new series of Britains Lost Masterpieces, where two pictures , one before unattributed, at the art Galery are discussed. will presumably be later on iplayer
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I have just watched this programme on iplayer and thoroughly enjoyed it. It showed the Art Gallery off to it's full magnificence and the contents therein. I also enjoyed the social history aspect to it and especially the little section on allotments and the facts it unearthed.
Thank you Mike for bringing it to everyone's attention and I would recommend any member to view it if you get the chance.
 
I popped into the museum at lunchtime today and got this photo.

Two landscape paintings discovered.

Two planks thought to be by Bruegel the Elder was attributed to Bruegel the Younger (the figures) and Joos de Momper (the landscape background).

While the piece thought to be a Thomas Gainsborough was attributed to Thomas Barker of Bath.

The programme was presented by Bendor Grosvenor and Emma Dabiri

 
I always liked any Breughel (elder or younger) painting; there is so much action to see in them. They illustrate a part of human social history which lasted for many centuries, which has now, apart from some of the more rural areas, gone.
 
Spent hours in the late 50,s early 60,s exploring the art gallery and museum. Things that stand out were the sphinx as you went in then the fantastic tiger in the glass case and the massive Japanese crab. The whole building had it,s own smell, never noticed it in other museums! After the art gallery it was off down to Newall Street and the science museum, pre City of Birmingham display. Loved the working machines that could be activated by the touch of a button, happy days. Remember it like yesterday.
 
alan bartlett said:
Spent hours in the late 50,s early 60,s exploring the art gallery and museum. Things that stand out were the sphinx as you went in then the fantastic tiger in the glass case and the massive Japanese crab. The whole building had it,s own smell, never noticed it in other museums! After the art gallery it was off down to Newall Street and the science museum, pre City of Birmingham display. Loved the working machines that could be activated by the touch of a button, happy days. Remember it like yesterday.
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I don't rememember the Japanese crab. The roaring dinosaur is one thing that stands out in my memory, and the pterodactyl, which I think was suspended over the mummy gallery. There was, I think, a black New Look dress or suit in a glass case somewhere, in a secluded area.
 
Maria Magenta said:
I don't rememember the Japanese crab. The roaring dinosaur is one thing that stands out in my memory, and the pterodactyl, which I think was suspended over the mummy gallery. There was, I think, a black New Look dress or suit in a glass case somewhere, in a secluded area.
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In the 50's I loved to go to the Science Museum, I would take the bus from Handsworth to Snow Hill a penny each way. I would get a shilling and the rest was mine!
No matter how many times I went there I learned something more because they rarely changed anything in those days. It was a wonderful place! I loved the machines but also John Cobbs Railton Mobile Special. As I got older I appreciated more how fast 400 mph was!
 
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