What are the opening hours?

Tuesday 10am - 5pm Wednesday 10am - 5pm Thursday 10am - 5pm Friday 10am - 5pm Saturday 10am - 5pm Sunday 10am - 5pm

Manchester Art Gallery

Name: Manchester Art Gallery
Address: Mosley Street, Manchester, M23JL, GB
Telephone: +441612358888
Price range: Not Applicable
Rating: 4.3

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Manchester Art Gallery

🏛️Caring for Manchester’s public collection of over 46000 objects
Free & open to all. Tuesday-Sunday 10am-5pm
(6527)

Manchester Art Gallery

Manchester Art Gallery is one of the country’s finest art museums. We mix works from our wonderful historic collections with the best international contemporary art to bring fresh perspectives to familiar images, create visual dialogues and encourage conversation and debate. We welcome over half a million visitors each year to our home in the heart of the city, a blend of h

istoric and contemporary architecture that echoes our innovative artistic programme. Through our exhibitions and events, we offer extraordinary encounters with brilliant art. Explore our collections of fine art, spanning six centuries and including many major modern and contemporary pieces. We are famous for 19th century British paintings, particularly our outstanding collection of Pre-Raphaelite works. Our decorative arts collections showcase the artistry, tastes and techniques of every era and culture, from ancient civilizations to today’s designer makers. Our collections of ceramics, silver, glass, furniture and costume are especially fine. We constantly renew and update our collections displays so you should discover something new every time you visit.

26/08/2026

Sunday 30 September
Join Pride in Ageing LGBT Foundation and Dementia Disco this weekend for Manchester Pride celebrations

🪩 Dementia Disco, 2-4pm
Tap your toes and show off your best moves at the Dementia-Friendly Disco. A line-up of LGBTQ+ community DJs will be backed with archive video projections. Hear a selection of uplifting pride anthems from across the decades in an accessible, lower-volume, low-sensory space with plenty of seating.

Dance, hangout for a while or grab a free juice or hot drink.

Presented with thanks to Dementia Disco and North West Film Archive.

Line up:
2-3pm DJ Gypsy (ALL FM)
3-3.05pm Welcome from Dementia Disco
3.05-3.20pm Derek Jarman Pocket Park DJs
3.20-4pm DJ Tony Openshaw (ALL FM)

Free, book via Eventbrite 👇
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/dementia-friendly-disco-music-and-memory-pride-celebration-event-tickets-1995687792911

21/08/2026

📣 Join the team at Platt Hall

We are looking for an enthusiastic Health and Wellbeing Coach to join an innovative partnership between Platt Hall and Better Health MCR.
The role offers an exciting opportunity to use Platt Hall’s collections, programmes and historic building, alongside community health initiatives to improve health outcomes and tackle health inequalities across Manchester.

Are you passionate about supporting people to make positive lifestyle changes? Head to the link below to find out more and apply.

📍Platt Hall and The Robert Darbishire Practice, Rusholme Health Centre
💷Band 5 £32,073 - £39,043 per annum
⏱️Full-time, fixed-term 2 years
🗓️Apply via NHS Jobs by Sunday 13 September 2026

There will be an online information session on Tuesday 1 September, 1-2pm.�Email Cara at Better Health MCR for the link - [email protected]

https://www.platthall.org/jobsandopportunities

18/08/2026

Art UK feature ‘Cotton, costume and colonialosm: artist Holly Graham’s at Manchester Art Gallery’ by flematu sessay.

Featuring:
- Insights from Holly Graham on her process, development and delivery of her exhibition, performance and film.
- Research into exhibition themes and legacy by artist and cultural producer flematu sessay public tactics.

“In the autumn of 1859, a 33-year-old Black woman stepped up to the podium at the Manchester Athenaeum and delivered a message the city was not ready to hear. Sarah Parker Remond – an African American free woman, abolitionist and physician – had crossed the Atlantic and arrived at the beating heart of the cotton empire.”

“Over a century and a half later, with a keen interest in Remond and these reflections, another Black woman has delivered her own message to the city in the very same building. London-based artist Holly Graham, in her exhibition ‘The Warp / The Weft / The Wake’ at Manchester Art Gallery, addresses the city and renews the call to reckon with this colonial legacy, encouraging visitors to listen and reflect on these turbulent histories.”

Read the full article at Art UK
https://artuk.org/discover/stories/cotton-costume-and-colonialism-artist-holly-graham-at-manchester-art-gallery

View the exhibition via our guide on Bloomberg Connects
https://guides.bloombergconnects.org/en-GB/guide/manchesterArtGallery

📷 Michael Pollard

13/08/2026

Celebrating 10 years of Creative Futures 🎉

Congratulations to everyone collecting their A-level results today! Whatever’s next for you, we hope it’s brilliant.

It’s the perfect time to reflect on 10 years of Creative Futures: our partnership with The Manchester College, supporting and developing young creative talent right here in the city.

This academic year, nearly 400 Visual Arts students aged 16-18 have spent time with us as part of their studies — across Photography and Film, Fashion and Textiles, Ceramics, 3D Design, and Painting and Printmaking. College tutors used the gallery as a real teaching space, with students getting hands-on time with our fine art, costume, and craft and design collections.

The partnership allows students to connect directly with Manchester’s creative scene: artists, designers and curators working across the city. By showing the roles, people, structures and working practices of how galleries and artists operate, students gain the confidence and imagination to respond creatively and exhibit publicly. By placing them in Manchester’s cultural narrative, they can become part of shaping it.

See the work of THE MANCHESTER COLLEGE students displayed on the balcony, alongside their inspirations from the collection.

11/08/2026

Earlier this year, artist Holly Graham activated the performance-costume on display in The Warp/ The Weft/ The Wake during a filmed performance-lecture, delivered in the style of a gallery tour in front of an audience here at Manchester Art Gallery.

The film artwork The Warp/ The Weft/ The Wake: Speaking Back builds on the expansive research and reflection Holly Graham gathered during her residency at the gallery and Platt Hall as part of the 20/20 project.

In the script, Graham thinks about speaking back to authority and responding to space. She channels the presence of African- American abolitionist Sarah Paker Remond. Her campaigning was pivotal in raising awareness of the lives and the forced labour that facilitated the city’s cotton elite, the wealth invested into the institution, and the growth of the city.

The film is now presented in the Athenaeum, the very space that Sarah Parker Remond delivered her speech in 1859.
Head to gallery 19 on the second floor.

…….
The Warp / The Weft / The Wake: Speaking Back is commissioned by Manchester City Galleries and made possible with support from Arts Council England Museum Renewal Fund.

📷 1,2 & 4: Marni V Photography
3 Micheal Pollard Photography

10/08/2026

📣 Join the Retail Team at Manchester Art Gallery

We’re looking for two enthusiastic, customer-focused Retail Assistants to join our gallery shop and make every visit warm, welcoming and memorable. You’ll help customers discover unique products inspired by art, design and Manchester’s rich cultural heritage, while providing excellent service and supporting the gallery’s retail operation.

Every conversation, recommendation and sale helps support the work of Manchester Art Gallery to make great art, exhibitions, learning and thinking happen.

If you are a Manchester resident who’s loves culture and is looking for a rewarding part-time role, head to the link below to find out more.

https://manchesterartgallery.org/about/jobs-opportunities/

📍Manchester Art Gallery
💷 Grade 3 £25,583 - £25,989
⏱️Part-time, permanent (14 hrs/week)
🗓️Apply by Thursday 20 August 2026

07/08/2026

Last chance to see! Holly Graham: The Warp/ The Weft/ The Wake
Closing 6 September 2026

The exhibition is the outcome of a 15-month artist residency at Manchester Art Gallery, part of the 20/20 programme led by University of the Arts London (UAL) in partnership with the Decolonising Arts Institute.

The exhibition centres around a performance costume modelled on the silhouette of dress worn by African American Abolitionist campaigner- Sarah Parker Remond, delivered a speech in the Athenaeum while visiting Manchester during a tour of Britain in 1859.

The space includes the artists files and a process film that follows the development of the performance costume co-created by the artist and her mother-Jennifer Graham.

Drawings on oral history recordings, textiles and pattern books at Platt Hall and the city’s archives to explore the legacies and impact of the cotton industry and the industrial expansion that fuelled the growth of the city and the wealth of the collectors, merchants and industrialists who founded The Royal Manchester Institute (RMI), forerunner to Manchester Art Gallery in 1823.

Access case studies through a collaboration with Global Threads; a public history project co-led by The Centre for The Study of the Legacies of British Slavery, University College London and The Science & Industry Museum, surfacing new narratives of Transatlantic slavery within Manchester’s industrial history.

The Warp/ The Weft/ The Wake closes on 6 September 2026.
Find it gallery 8 on the first floor.

06/08/2026

As the school year winds down, we welcomed pupils, parents and teachers into the gallery to celebrate a term of creativity through our Art of Resilience and Art Works in Schools projects. The programmes give children and young people the chance to experience artwork from the collection around their schools and work creatively with artists.

A group from Moston Fields performed ‘Building Blocks of Resilience’, a song they wrote with artist Léonie Kate. A lovely, heartfelt moment to end the year on.

Eight schools took part: Armitage CE, The Birches, Castlefield Campus, Moston Fields, Oasis Harpur Mount, Rushbrook Primary Academy, Saviour CE and St Augustine’s CE — working alongside artists Sam Owen Hull, Kate Freebrough, Léonie Kate, Chris Alton, Cat Drawer Jim and Kay Woods.

The Art of Resilience approach centres on six aspects of the creative process as building blocks of resilience:
getting started
finding flow
connecting
collaborating
creative problem solving
imagination

We’re working with Dr Simon Parry at the University of Manchester to build evidence for the positive impact this kind of creative work has on health and wellbeing.

01/08/2026

Pride Celebration Events 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️
Sunday 30 August 1-4.30pm

Manchester Art Gallery, Pride in Ageing LGBT Foundation and Dementia Disco invite you to an uplifting afternoon of music, art and community during Pride weekend.

What Remains Dear
1-4.30pm
Vivian Cheung’s sound installation will be on loop all afternoon in the Derek Jarman Pocket Park

Dementia Disco
2-4pm
Tap your toes and show off your best moves in an accessible, low-sensory space with a line-up of LGBTQ+ community DJs

Q***r tour
3-4pm
Join a tour of the collection exploring works related to LGBTQ+ history, including Derek Jarman’s Q***r.
Meet at the Information Desk.

The LGBT Foundation will also be on hand throughout the afternoon with information and support.

Free, open to everyone.

🖼️Derek Jarman, Q***r, 1992
On display in WORN: The life within clothes, gallery 13

30/07/2026

Coming soon!
Looking for a get-away without leaving Manchester? Escapes is a brand-new collection display exploring the fascinating connections between art, memory and the city’s environment.

Featuring rarely seen Victorian escapist landscapes, objects from the Old Manchester collection and an exciting recent acquisition, the exhibition reveals how images of rolling hills, gardens, castles and coastlines offered moments of refuge and imagination from the bustle of urban life.

📅 Escapes
19 September 2026 - 30 September 2028
Free admission

🖼️ Detail of Cecil Gordon Lawson, The Minister’s Garden, 1878

Address

Mosley Street
Manchester
M23JL

Opening Hours

Tuesday	10am - 5pm
Wednesday	10am - 5pm
Thursday	10am - 5pm
Friday	10am - 5pm
Saturday	10am - 5pm
Sunday	10am - 5pm

Telephone

+441612358888

Website

http://www.manchesterartgallery.org/, https://manchesterartgallery.org/social-media-guidance/, https://linktr.ee/mcrartg

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