The Harris museum, art gallery and library in Preston reopened on 28 September after a four-year redevelopment.
The Grade I-listed building underwent a £19m transformation by Buttress Architects, while Ralph Appelbaum Associate led the exhibition design. The project has created new galleries, community facilities, learning spaces, cafe and shop.
The historic structure was completely restored, and there were improvements to heating, lighting and accessibility.
The building now features a blended library throughout the exhibition space, funded by £1.375m from Lancashire County Council.
The Harris welcomed the Oscar-winning animator and creator of Wallace & Gromit Nick Park back to his home town to celebrate Preston’s cultural heritage.
In one of the new temporary exhibition spaces, the museum is hosting an immersive exhibition, Wallace & Gromit in A Case at the Museum, which features a recreation of Wallace’s living room, closely based on Park’s grandmother’s Preston home.
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Park said: “Walking through these galleries again, seeing families enjoying the exhibition where I once spent hours as a curious child reading about filmmaking and animation, it’s incredibly moving.”
“The Harris left a lasting impression on me and now I hope Wallace & Gromit can inspire the next generation of young creatives who visit here.”
The Harris hopes to welcome at least 450,000 visitors a year after the reopening, an increase of 100,000.
Tim Joel, the head of arts and culture at Preston City Council and the project director, said: “The founding principles of the project were to make the building more accessible for visitors to come and explore.”
“We had extensive consultations and conversations with our communities – with people who were using the Harris and people who weren’t.
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“We also wanted flexibility to switch up our exhibitions and displays on a much more frequent basis. It gives visitors a motivation to keep coming back which is important.
“Most importantly, we wanted to reflect our communities in our displays, in the stories we are telling, including some of the more difficult narratives, like the history of tea, which is really important as a public institution.”
The project was funded with Preston City Council, National Lottery Heritage Fund, the UK Government’s Towns Fund and Lancashire County Council.
It is part of the Harris Your Place project, which aimed to restore the Harris as a 21st century community, cultural and learning space.
Joel said: “Regional museums are in crisis and the funding landscape is terrible, but what we’ve done here should protect us from that.
“Now the challenge is how we keep that work going because it’s such as important resource as a civic cultural community hub.
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“It’s important the people of Preston are able to come and really discover the wonders of the collection and have access to creativity and culture.”
The Harris’s collection includes ceramics, glass, art, photography and fashion and textiles, as well as the UK’s longest museum Foucault pendulum, which hangs at 35m above the space.
It also includes the newly commissioned installation by the Egyptian artist Khaled Hafez, who has explored the relationship between Egypt and Preston.
Essential works were completed on the building while it was closed, including the removal of asbestos from the roof and repairs to the building’s structure.
Neal Charlton, the director of Buttress Architects, said: “The Harris project has been so amazing because the building is so architecturally beautiful and has such a great set of bones, so we had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to complete a large-scale work on it and right its wrongs.
“Part of the beauty of the Harris is that it doesn’t have to be about the next collection that comes from the V&A or the British Museum, it can be about popular culture as well.
“It’s a great way of ensuring that people come, and we have a structure now that draws people up to the top floor, whereas before the refurbishment, there were many parts of the museum that some of Preston’s population felt wasn’t for them. It’s about breaking those barriers down.”
The Harris is one of the largest museums, galleries and libraries in the region, and is a National Portfolio Organisation.
Charlton said: “The Harris sits in a strange place between the national museums we work on and more typical local authority museums that tell important stories of their place. This museum does both and everything in between.”
“It now sits very rightfully as the cultural centre of Preston and holds its own.”
The Harris is open from 9am-5pm Monday-Saturday, with late opening until 9pm on Thursdays, and from 11am-4pm on Sundays. Entry is free and the museum is accessible via train using Avanti West Coast mainline services to Preston.