Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery completes the next stage in its phased reopening today, as doors open to an updated building and new gallery spaces.
One of the Co-CEOs of its operator, Birmingham Museums Trust, is now setting sights on improved financial stability and new ways of working to guide its future.
Sara Wajid, who is Co-CEO of the trust alongside Zak Mensah, described the opening preview on Tuesday evening as “pretty epic”, it “exceeded expectations” and was ultimately “quite emotional” she told Advisor.
From today the public will be able to see the refreshed building and among new offerings, its Industrial Gallery which reopens with a new display ‘Made in Birmingham’, featuring significant people and objects with links to the city.
In what might once have seemed a risky move, the museum has, alongside rewiring and roof repairs, moved its fine art collection aside to tell this more local story as visitors enter.
The gamble, Wajid says, already appears to be paying off: “although it seems blindingly obvious that Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery should be about the history of Birmingham, previously quite a lot of the ground floor was dedicated to the fine art collection, which is an outstanding and world class collection, but perhaps to the people of Birmingham might have felt a bit like a national collection that happened to be in their city.”
Objects now on display include a sign from the city’s former HP Sauce factory, a Ginny Lemon costume and poet Benjamin Zephaniah’s typewriter. A blue plaque commemorating the poet, who was also an actor and activist, is also on display.
It was great speak at the preview of @BM_AG reopening!
As Cabinet Member, I support Zak and Sara’s vision for an inclusive museum. BMAG is vital to our vibrant art scene.
I can’t wait to share this experience with my family + see the joy on young visitors’ faces! pic.twitter.com/rMFEXW7phM
— Councillor Saima Suleman Hall Green North (@Cllr_suleman) October 22, 2024
Visitors will be able to see the Round Room’s ‘One Fresh Take’ exhibition displaying both contemporary and classic artworks, ‘Wild City’ focusing on nature and wildlife for families, and The Pixel Studio, a new digital gallery space for immersive experiences and digital art installations.
“It was wonderful to see BMAG alive and kicking last night. Congratulations to Sara Wajid and Zak Mensah and the team at Birmingham Museums Trust,” said Museums + Heritage Director Anna Preedy, who attended the event.
“As I left the museum many people came up to me asking if the museum was open again. If that’s a measure of public appetite, Thursday and beyond should be very busy!”
Describing responses from attendees at the opening even on Tuesday night, Wajid said it was the ‘Made in Birmingham’ gallery city which garnered the most attention.
“People just kept coming back to how significant it was to them, particularly people living in Birmingham, to have the history of the city told in a way that they could recognise themselves in, absolutely centred in the main city’s museum.”
Local focus, national significance
Wajid said there had been in the city a “strange feeling of Birmingham dodging its own identity” in recent history, but more recently it had begun “claiming itself as an actual place, not a stop on the way to somewhere else”.
Despite the more local focus inside the museum, Wajid said it was a “nationally significant event” to “get a museum of this scale and stature reopened to the public after such a long closure”.
“I hope [the opening] gives a sense, beyond Birmingham, of renewal and rebuilding; a spirit partly of a new government and a hope that we’re turning a corner as a country, if that’s not too overblown – albeit at a slightly slower pace than ideally we would have liked”.
The next chapter
With the reopening concluded, Wajid now looks to the future, “financially stabilising such a big public sector organisation after the very rocky times that the city’s been through and the wider economy it is in”. It will also tackle the more abstract challenge of “making a new kind of civic museum that is much more representative and popular at scale.”
“Basically, how are we going to get the other three quarters of the building open in a way that is financially sustainable, ethical, popular and really works for the people of this city”, she said.
“It’s tempting to lean in to the old ways of making money in museums, which frankly goes against the grain of trying to widen access. It’s an age-old conundrum… needing to encourage visitors who have cash to spend. There’s nothing wrong with that, but you can’t simultaneously do that to the exclusion of trying to widen access.”
Fantastic to see the doors of Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery open once again, after a period of extensive renovation work.
The museum last opened its doors in 2022 as part of the Birmingham 2022 Festival, funded by @HeritageFundUK in celebration of the Commonwealth Games.
1/3 pic.twitter.com/0Pg4w1ckqr
— The National Lottery Heritage Fund Midlands & East (@HeritageFundM_E) October 22, 2024
Another challenge: “how do we make that citizens jury a more permanent way of running things around here?”.
The project saw thousands of Birmingham residents sent invitations to participate in its Museums Citizens’ Jury, a new community-driven museum management project, which is directly involving local residents in deciding the future direction of Birmingham’s museums.