Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery to close for essential repairs
Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (BMAG) is in its final weeks of opening until 2024. The museum is due to close fully on Sunday 13 November.
The closure is necessary so that essential works can be carried out on fabric of the building, including the roof, wiring, lifts and other out-of-date infrastructure.
Sara Wajid, co-director of Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, said: “The roof needs urgent attention, and we’re also going to fix all those annoying problems like the broken lifts. While we’re closed, the staff team will be busy planning the nuts and bolts of what BMAG will look like when we reopen – how we place the local, real-life stories of Brummies alongside the wider global history.”
This year the museum has run several pop-up exhibitions that represent its future aim of co-creation with the people of Birmingham. Its six current exhibitions will remain on display until 13 November for the public to see.
The exhibitions are all co-curated. We Are Birmingham in the central atrium was created with six young people in partnership with We Don’t Settle, an organisation that champions untold stories through culture.
Collection Stories identifies objects from Birmingham’s civic collection and invites visitors’ opinions and knowledge of them. The other exhibitions are Blacklash: Racism and the Struggle for Self-Defence, by Kalaboration Arts; In the Que, about the 90s club venue; Wonderland: Birmingham’s Cinema Stories (by Flatpack Projects); and SaVĀge K’lubroom, a collaboration between two New Zealand artists, Rosanna Ramond and Jaimie Waititi, who ask “what does it mean to be savage?”.
The museum is due to reopen in 2024.