The Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery is the local museum service for the borough of

Blackburn with Darwen Blackburn with Darwen is a borough and unitary authority area in Lancashire, North West England. It consists of the industrial town of Blackburn and the market town of Darwen including other villages around the two towns. Formation It was fou ...

Borough Council. It is a museum with collections of

Christian icons An icon () is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, in the cultures of the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Catholic churches. They are not simply artworks; "an icon is a sacred image used in religious devotion". The most c ...

, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and local history, as well as those of the former Lewis Textile Museum.

The building

The museum is in a

Grade II listed In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

building, on the corner of Museum Street and Richmond Terrace. It was originally opened as an art gallery and library in 1874, with the library occupying the ground floor and the art gallery on the first floor. The building was enlarged in 1893. In the 1970s, the library moved to Town Hall Street, occupying the former premises of the Co-operative Central Store, providing more space for the display of the local and

social history Social history, often called the new social history, is a field of history that looks at the lived experience of the past. In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in his ...

collections which formed Blackburn Museum & Art Gallery.

Lewis Textile Museum

The museum service was also responsible for the Lewis Textile Museum before it was closed. The contents of the Lewis Textile Museum have now been moved into the main museum building on Museum Street and the gallery which houses the collection of

loom A loom is a device used to weave cloth and tapestry. The basic purpose of any loom is to hold the warp threads under tension to facilitate the interweaving of the weft threads. The precise shape of the loom and its mechanics may vary, but th ...

s renamed Cottontown. The Lewis Textile Museum was bequeathed by Thomas Boys Lewis, a local cotton industrialist.

Collections

The most notable collections include the Japanese Print Collection which was amassed by Thomas Boys Lewis. The Manuscript and

Numismatic Numismatics is the study or collection of currency, including coins, tokens, paper money, medals and related objects. Specialists, known as numismatists, are often characterized as students or collectors of coins, but the discipline also includ ...

Collections, both of which were bequeathed by Edward Hart and the Icon Collection. It also holds the Victoria Cross of Marcus Ervine-Andrews, the last Irish man awarded the VC, who was educated at

Stonyhurst College Stonyhurst College is a co-educational Catholic Church, Roman Catholic independent school, adhering to the Society of Jesus, Jesuit tradition, on the Stonyhurst, Stonyhurst Estate, Lancashire, England. It occupies a Grade I listed building. Th ...

Exhibitions

In 2006, Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery took part in the touring exhibition, C21, which was part of the Fukuoka Asian Art Trinennale. Reviews of the exhibition were reported by agencies such as the BBC.

References

External links

Official Museum website

Local authority website

History of Blackburn Museum & Art Gallery

The Friends of Blackburn Museum & Art Gallery
{{Authority control Textile museums in the United Kingdom Museums in Lancashire Art museums and galleries in Lancashire Museum and Art Gallery Museum and Art Gallery Museum and Art Gallery Grade II listed buildings in Lancashire