The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery is in Bethesda Street,

Hanley Hanley is one of the six towns that, along with Burslem, Longton, Fenton, Tunstall and Stoke-upon-Trent, amalgamated to form the City of Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire, England. Hanley is the ''de facto'' city centre, having long been the ...

, one of the six towns of

Stoke-on-Trent Stoke-on-Trent (often abbreviated to Stoke) is a city and Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority area in Staffordshire, England, with an area of . In 2019, the city had an estimated population of 256,375. It is the largest settlement ...

Staffordshire Staffordshire (; postal abbreviation Staffs.) is a landlocked county in the West Midlands region of England. It borders Cheshire to the northwest, Derbyshire and Leicestershire to the east, Warwickshire to the southeast, the West Midlands Cou ...

. Admission is free. One of the four local authority museums in the city, the other three being Gladstone Pottery Museum,

Ford Green Hall Ford Green Hall is a Grade II* listed farmhouse and historic house museum in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire. The oldest parts of the house date from the late 16th century, with one wing being either added or greatly repaired at some point in t ...

and Etruria Industrial Museum, The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery houses collections that bring together the identities that went into forming the area known as the Potteries. The museum holds a collection of Staffordshire ceramics. All the collections at this museum are categorized as Designated Collections. Galleries display fine and decorative arts, costume, local history, archaeology and natural science collections. There is a second world war aircraft on permanent display, a

Supermarine Spitfire The Supermarine Spitfire is a British single-seat fighter aircraft used by the Royal Air Force and other Allied countries before, during, and after World War II. Many variants of the Spitfire were built, from the Mk 1 to the Rolls-Royce Grif ...

whose earlier Marks were designed by

R. J. Mitchell Reginald Joseph Mitchell (20 May 189511 June 1937) was a British aircraft designer who worked for the Southampton aviation company Supermarine from 1916 until 1936. He is best remembered for designing racing seaplanes such as the Supermari ...

who came from nearby Butt Lane.

History

The museum opened on its current site in 1956 as the Stoke-on-Trent City Museum & Art Gallery. The building was designed by the city architect; J. R. Piggott. The museum's Spitfire, was received from the Royal Air Force in 1972. Over the winter of 1985/6 the Spitfire was moved from its previous home in a glasshouse outside the museum to a specially constructed gallery within the museum. Since February 2010, The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery has been the home of a number of artefacts from the Staffordshire Hoard. 52,500 visitors viewed 118 items at the Potteries Museum during a 23-day exhibition in February 2010.http://www.esci.keele.ac.uk/nsgga/bulletin/bulletin093.pdf Since Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and Stoke-on-Trent Museums have purchased the Hoard, items have been on permanent display at both venues. Over 80 pieces can be seen in The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery's archaeology gallery. Redevelopment of the Saxon part to this gallery in the latter half of 2010 has set the Hoard within a more tangible context, using existing pieces from the museum's collection of Staffordshire archaeology. In 2012 the museum ran an exhibition on the subject of connections between Stoke-on-Trent and the Titanic. It included information on people from the area who died in the sinking and archive footage of Captain Edward Smith who was born in

. On 28 February 2017, the

Leekfrith torcs The Leekfrith torcs are four Iron Age gold torcs found by two hobby metal detectorists in December 2016 in a field in Leekfrith, north Staffordshire, England. The find consists of three neck torcs and a smaller bracelet, which were located in ...

, believed to be the oldest Iron Age gold jewellery found in Britain, were unveiled to the public for the first time, at the museum. From the following day, they were placed on public display. In June 2017 a bronze statue of Arnold Bennett was located on the pavement just next to the front entrance to the museum. In the 2010s the museum's Spitfire underwent a three-year restoration program before returning to a new gallery at the museum in September 2021.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Potteries Museum and Art Gallery Art museums and galleries in Staffordshire Museums in Stoke-on-Trent Decorative arts museums in England Staffordshire pottery Natural history museums in England Ceramics museums in the United Kingdom

History

See also

References