Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery set to reopen in April 2022

Many of us have been missing being able to visit Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery (BMAG), so you will be pleased to hear that the doors will be reopening once more when the building partially reopens in April 2022. New displays will bring a fresh new feel to the Museum ahead of the Commonwealth Games.

After being closed, firstly by the pandemic and then by essential electrical works, BMAG will reopen on Thursday 28 April 2022, welcoming visitors back to the Round Room and Industrial Gallery seven days a week, from 10am – 5pm.

To mark the reopening, BMAG is being handed over to some of Birmingham’s most exciting creatives. Animating the Round Room and Industrial Gallery, while the rest of BMAG remains closed for essential work, are Birmingham Music Archive, Fierce, Flatpack Projects, Kalaboration Arts and working in collaboration with Birmingham Museums - Don’t Settle in partnership with Beatfreeks. Having been invited to respond to the theme of ‘This Is Birmingham’ visitors can expect a collision of new exhibitions and live events as well as space to join in and contribute themselves. The Edwardian Tearooms will also be an exciting hub of activity and back open as a welcome pitstop for a bite to eat and a cup of tea.

Bringing together a striking combination of stories that bridge popular culture and global struggles, the vibrant new displays will share different encounters and experiences, playfully turning the theme of ‘This Is Birmingham’ on its head by asking the question: ‘What’s your Birmingham?’ Visitors will play an important role and be encouraged to explore and contribute to the many different stories that make Birmingham the fantastic city that it is.

Sara Wajid and Zak Mensah, Co-CEOs of Birmingham Museums Trust said: “The year ahead is really exciting. Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery has been closed – firstly by the pandemic and then for rewiring – and we’re going to partially reopen in 2022 in time for the Commonwealth Games, and it’s going to feel very different.

“We’ve invited some of the city’s leading creatives and arts organisations to animate the Round Room and Industrial Gallery with vibrant new displays that feel much more immediate. We’ll be touching on themes like popular culture, identity and community and there will be a very warm welcome inviting everyone to join in. We can’t wait!”

In an exciting shake up, BMAG’s reopening will be launched with a radical transformation of the stunning Round Room. We Are Birmingham will reflect the people of 21st Century Birmingham. Co-curated by Birmingham Museums and a group of six young people from Don’t Settle in partnership with Beatfreeks, the new display will present a vivid celebration of the city that Birmingham is now as well as aspirations of what the city could become.

Brummie music lovers will want to head straight to a new exhibition which will celebrate one of Birmingham’s greatest music venues – the Que Club. Curated by Birmingham Music Archive, ‘In The Que’, will feature previously unseen photographs by critically acclaimed photographer Terence Donovan, personal artefacts, archive film footage, flyers and posters. Reflecting the experiences of the Que Club – from the ravers to the DJs, musicians to staff – the exhibition will encourage visitors and former clubbers to share memories and join in with a lively programme of events.

‘The Healing Gardens of Bab’, presented by Birmingham 2022 Festival and produced by Fierce, will be a multidisciplinary programme that uplifts alternative expressions of gender, sexuality and family. Fierce will work with leading Aotearoa/New Zealand-based artist Sistar S’pacific, aka Rosanna Raymond, who will create a unique installation in collaboration with LGBTQIA+ communities in Birmingham.

Cinema lovers will be catered for too, as ‘Wonderland’ by Flatpack Projects and presented by Birmingham 2022 Festival will explore how cinema has shaped the streets, social lives and dreams of Brummies over the past 125 years. Flatpack plans to map all 100 plus cinemas in the city - from fairgrounds to multiplexes and from South Asian extravaganzas to pop-ups. The display will showcase photographs and cinema memorabilia, alongside Birmingham’s collection of magic lanterns and optical toys. Visitors can join in by sharing their own cinema-going memories, watching film screenings or taking part in drop-in activities.

From the mid-1980s and over a period of two decades artist, cultural activist and filmmaker, Mukhtar Dar, documented the struggles of Asian and African Caribbean communities against racism. ‘Blacklash: Racism and the Struggle for Self-Defence’, by Kalaboration Arts, draws on Mukhtar’s extensive archive of photos, videos and other political ephemera, providing a historical context for contemporary anti-racism movements such as Black Lives Matter, as well as encouraging reflection, discussion and debate.

As you can see there’s a lot of electrifying new displays and exhibitions ready to be explored, but it wouldn’t feel right to reopen the doors of this important cultural space without reflecting on all that has passed in Birmingham over the last two years of the Covid-19 pandemic. ‘Unprecedented times’, developed in partnership with Birmingham City Council’s Public Health Division and Birmingham Museums’ Community Action Panel, will explore survival of the human spirit in public crises past and present. The display will explore themes of hope and loss featuring historic objects from Birmingham’s collection alongside new work and photographs by Birmingham-based artists.

Finally, in the Gas Hall from 14 May, the Arts Council Collection presents ‘Found Cities, Lost Objects: Women in the City’, a national touring exhibition curated by Turner Prize-winning artist and cultural activist Lubaina Himid CBE, which explores modern city life from a female perspective.

Birmingham City Council’s essential electrical works programme will continue at BMAG until 2023/4. For the work to take place over 36,000 items of Birmingham’s collections have been moved into safe storage. For the reopening in April 2022, it is planned that only the Round Room, Industrial Gallery, Edwardian Tearooms, Bridge Gallery, Gallery 10 and BMAG shop will be open.

All other galleries can still be explored online via the BMAG virtual tour at birminghammuseums.org.uk/bmag/virtual-tour. n