Public Servant Lifestyle

Manchester Art Gallery’s origins may lie in the 19th century, but it has become a truly 21st century gallery recently with the launch of its on-line collections database. Visitors can now access the venue's collections 24 hours a day, seven days a week on the internet, wherever they are.

This new service is part of a major project to electronically document the 50,000 items in the Gallery's collections of fine and decorative art and costume on a huge computer database. The system enables the public to access the database via a link on the Gallery's website: www.manchestergalleries.org.

Visitors will now be able to look at works of art not currently on display at Manchester Art Galley, if they can’t visit the gallery in person and when the venue is closed. The database can also be used for research purposes and it will be utilised to promote the Gallery's commercial picture library.

Virtual Tour

The database currently holds 20,000 publicly available records, including 1,500 colour images and more will be added on an ongoing basis. Future developments include a virtual tour of the rooms at Manchester Art Gallery and new themed sections of collections from the Gallery of Costume in the city’s Rusholme area - situated on the 'curry mile' edge of Platt Fields (also worth a visit anyway - for the beautiful sunken Shakespearean Garden alone). For those who do not have access to a computer at home, visitors to Manchester Art Gallery will soon be able to search the collections from two computers based in the Gallery café.

Housing an internationally renowned collection, in stunning Victorian and contemporary surroundings – a magnificent 19th century entrance hall leads to a very impressive glazed atrium and from there to newly refurbished existing gallery buildings - MAG offers one of the city's most elegant and impressive places of interest.

Councillor Mark Hackett, Executive Member for Culture and Leisure at Manchester City Council said "Manchester Art Gallery's new database is a wonderful opportunity to make the city's world class art collections even more accessible to a wider audience of people, including those from the education sector. We also hope that even more people will visit the Gallery in person as a result of these new developments."

The exact date for the launch of the MAG online database has yet to be announced.

Manchester City Galleries manages four venues in and around the city centre of Manchester: Heaton Hall, Manchester Art Gallery (MAG), the Gallery of Costume and Wythenshawe Hall.

Manchester Art Gallery can be located on Mosley Street, just off Piccadilly Gardens, is open Tuesday-Sunday between 10.00am-5.00pm, closed on Mondays - except Bank Holidays. MAG is also closed 1 January, Good Friday and between 24-26 December and New Year’s Eve. The gallery is free to enter, although some special exhibitions may have a charge.

More information available in Arts & Culture, Days Out