Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery reopens after four years of closures

Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery has reopened to the public, after being closed for most of the past four years.

Galleries including the Round Room, the Industrial Gallery, the history galleries and the Bridge Gallery reopened on 24 October, along with the museum's tearoom and shop. Around 70 per cent of the museum's spaces are now open.

Four years of closures

The museum, housed in the Council House complex on Chamberlain Square, closed in October 2020 because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

It stayed shut throughout 2021 as part of a project to rewire the whole Council House complex. It partially reopened in April 2022 with a number of pop-up exhibitions, but closed again in December 2022 while the work continued.

A city institution

The museum is one of Birmingham's best-loved institutions. Its galleries sit beneath the clock tower known as Big Brum, and its famous Round Room has welcomed generations of visitors.

Its collections are among the most important in the country outside London, including a world-famous collection of Pre-Raphaelite art, and it is home to finds from the Staffordshire Hoard, the largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold ever discovered.

The museum has a long record of change. In 1951 the Museum of Science and Industry was incorporated into it, and when that museum closed in 2001 some of its exhibits moved to Thinktank, the science museum at Millennium Point. Both are now run by Birmingham Museums Trust.

It has also faced financial pressures before. In October 2010, the Waterhall gallery closed as a museum gallery after a £1.5 million cut to the museum's budget, although both the Waterhall and the Gas Hall have since been used for exhibitions throughout the year.

What visitors can see

With the Round Room, Industrial Gallery and history galleries open again, visitors can once more explore the story of Birmingham and see some of the city's treasures that have been out of view for years.

The museum is free to enter, and opening times are published by Birmingham Museums Trust.

Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery first opened in 1885, and originally included the city's science collections. Its extension behind the Council House was built to house the museum, and its clock tower, known to generations of Brummies as Big Brum, gives the building one of the most recognisable landmarks in the city centre.

The Staffordshire Hoard, the largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver metalwork ever found, was bought jointly by the museum and the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery in Stoke-on-Trent for £3.285 million.