Newport Museum and Art Gallery ( cy, Amgueddfa ac Oriel Gelf Casnewydd) (known locally as the City Museum ( cy, Amgueddfa Dinas)) is a museum, library and art gallery in the city of Newport, South Wales. It is located in

Newport city centre Newport city centre is traditionally regarded as the area of Newport, Wales bounded by the west bank of the River Usk, the George Street Bridge, the eastern flank of Stow Hill and the South Wales Main Line. Most of the city centre is containe ...

on John Frost Square and is adjoined to the Kingsway Shopping Centre.

The collections

Newport Museum opened in 1888. The collections include Archaeology, Social History, Art and Natural History. The most ancient artefacts in the museum are tools made by hunter-gatherers who walked the shores of the Severn estuary hundreds of thousands of years ago. The Roman collections rank amongst the best in Wales, comprising material excavated from the Roman town of

Caerwent Caerwent ( cy, Caer-went) is a village and community in Monmouthshire, Wales. It is located about five miles west of Chepstow and 11 miles east of Newport. It was founded by the Romans as the market town of ''Venta Silurum'', an important sett ...

and the fortress at

Caerleon Caerleon (; cy, Caerllion) is a town and community in Newport, Wales. Situated on the River Usk, it lies northeast of Newport city centre, and southeast of Cwmbran. Caerleon is of archaeological importance, being the site of a notable Roman ...

. The Medieval and later collections feature finds from local castles and priories, including an outstanding assemblage from Penhow Castle. The most significant items of Social History are the Chartist collection of weapons, broadsheets, prints and silver from the 1839 Chartist uprising in Newport and the Transporter Bridge archive, which includes all of the original designs for the bridge and photographs of its construction. The Fine Arts collections includes paintings by Sir Stanley Spencer, Dame

Laura Knight Dame Laura Knight ( Johnson; 4 August 1877 – 7 July 1970) was an English artist who worked in oils, watercolours, etching, engraving and drypoint. Knight was a painter in the figurative, realist tradition, who embraced English Impressi ...

and

L S Lowry Laurence Stephen Lowry ( ; 1 November 1887 – 23 February 1976) was an English artist. His drawings and paintings mainly depict Pendlebury, Lancashire (where he lived and worked for more than 40 years) as well as Salford and its vicinity ...

, and Welsh artists such as

Kyffin Williams Sir John Kyffin Williams, (9 May 1918 – 1 September 2006) was a Welsh landscape painter who lived at Pwllfanogl, Llanfairpwll, on the Island of Anglesey. Williams is widely regarded as the defining artist of Wales during the 20th century. Pe ...

Ceri Richards Ceri Giraldus Richards (6 June 1903 – 9 November 1971) was a Welsh painter, print-maker and maker of reliefs. Biography Richards was born in 1903 in the village of Dunvant, near Swansea, the son of Thomas Coslett Richards and Sarah Ric ...

and Stanley Lewis. The Decorative Art collections feature the John Wait teapot collection and the Iris Fox collection of porcelain and Wemyss ware and sculpture by Sir

Jacob Epstein Sir Jacob Epstein (10 November 1880 – 21 August 1959) was an American-British sculptor who helped pioneer modern sculpture. He was born in the United States, and moved to Europe in 1902, becoming a British subject in 1911. He often produce ...

and studio ceramics by Lucy Rie and Ewen Henderson.

Art gallery

As well as a museum, the building is home to Newport's principal art gallery. The gallery hosts a wide variety of British paintings,

watercolour Watercolor (American English) or watercolour (British English; see spelling differences), also ''aquarelle'' (; from Italian diminutive of Latin ''aqua'' "water"), is a painting method”Watercolor may be as old as art itself, going back to t ...

s and

contemporary art Contemporary art is the art of today, produced in the second half of the 20th century or in the 21st century. Contemporary artists work in a globally influenced, culturally diverse, and technologically advancing world. Their art is a dynamic co ...

works. The largest collection is known as the John & Elizabeth Wait Collection. Past exhibitions at the gallery have attracted controversy. In 2008 a painting of a naked woman smoking was removed from display after a complaint from a bishop. When it was put back, 20,000 people queued to see it. In October 2011 the council apologised for ''The Institute of Mental Health is Burning '' exhibition, where explicit sex scenes were put on display (and published in a free supplement) without any warning notices. In 2013 the temporary exhibitions programme was threatened with closure after Arts Council funding was withdrawn. Welsh actor

Michael Sheen Michael Christopher Sheen OBE (born 5 February 1969) is a Welsh actor, television producer and political activist. After training at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), he worked mainly in theatre throughout the 1990s with stage rol ...

spoke out against the closure threat. The post of Visual Arts Officer was to be scrapped (after more than 25 years) and the temporary shows replaced with a static exhibition from the permanent art collection. Possibly the final temporary exhibition, ''Shift'', by Welsh artist David Garner was launched in April 2013 following a public demonstration against the proposed closure. Garner created a special artwork, ''A Case of the Great Money Trick'', which was inspired by the campaign to keep the gallery open.Stephen Palmer
"Newport Art Gallery: protests continue as final show opens"
Art News, 19 April 2013. Retrieved 3 June 2013. The temporary exhibition programme closed after the conclusion of ''Shift''.

Newport Central Library

The museum building is also home to the city's public Central Library. It has a large collection of books and articles and is the headquarters of Newport's library network which includes Maindee and Caerleon libraries. In March 2012 it was reported that the Chartist Mural by Kenneth Budd in John Frost Square was to be recreated in Newport Central Library as part of the redevelopment of the area.Natalie Crockett
Chartist mural to be re-created in library
''South Wales Argus'', 22 March 2012. Retrieved 5 November 2013. The mural was demolished in 2013 and discussion on a replacement memorial is ongoing.

References

External links

Newport Museum's collection over 45 pages on Gathering the JewelsNewport Museum on the City of Newport website
{{Authority control Culture in Newport, Wales History of Newport, Wales Museums in Newport, Wales Art museums and galleries in Wales Local museums in Wales Natural history museums in the United Kingdom Museums of ancient Rome in Wales Archaeological museums in Wales City museums in the United Kingdom 1888 establishments in Wales Museums established in 1888

The collections

Art gallery

Newport Central Library

See also

References

External links