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phoebe-chambre
2nd October 2011

Gallery guide – Whitworth Art Gallery

Our introduction to the crucial galleries around and the pick of what’s on ahead.
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TLDR

WHITWORTH ART GALLERY

Oxford Road
Opening times: Monday-Saturday, 10-5; Sunday, 12-4
Free entry

Whitworth Art Gallery, friend and neighbour to Whitworth Park, esteemed part of the University of Manchester, and valued member of the Manchester Museums Consortium, is above all a pretty good gallery. For starters, a ravishing collection of the finest arts, textiles, wallpaper, prints, and sculpture to rival the heavyweight Victoria and Albert Museum in both size and significance. The Fine Art collection is built on themes of place and urban landscape in both Modern and historic work, including the notable British watercolours collection. If that’s not enough to get your pulse racing perhaps a brisk turn about the grounds will. That’s right, our only entry to include a garden, and a sculpture garden at that. The Whitworth builds on this fine base of a stockroom by consistently pushing the artistic envelope with its exhibitions. The upcoming Dark Matters exhibition does not disappoint on this front. It explores the impact of scientific and technological discovery on art; in particular interpretations of darkness and shadow. The sheer potential of artistic interpretation within this subject matter is equaled by the range of mediums and period in the exhibition: commissions, contemporary work, store room gems, a collaboration with Animate Projects, and a programme of film screenings. And it’s only down the road, so no excuses.
Dark Matters, 25/09-15/01/12


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The Whitworth’s latest exhibition, Turner: In Light and Shade, features a decent-if-hampered collection of the 19th century great’s works
Art galleries are a place to walk in silence together or alone, seldom feeling lonely. They are some of the most romantic spaces I have been to. As February is the month of Valentine’s, I took the liberty of going on a hunt to find the most romantic pieces of art in Manchester
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