Collection: Birmingham Museums

Collection-level records:

• Collection history (Collection development policy)

  The collection of Birmingham Museums pre-dates all its museum venues. The first items the city collected were the bust of David Cox by Peter Hollins (May 1863), the Sultanganj Buddha (October 1864) and Dead game by Edward Coleman (November 1864). The collection is now one of the three great civic collections of the UK, alongside those of Glasgow and Liverpool. It represents Britain’s former imperial and industrial wealth, assembled over a period of nearly 160 years through a combination of generosity, connoisseurship and curatorial knowledge.

  Birmingham took some time to decide that it would have a civic museum. Supporters such as George Dawson and John Thackray Bunce argued that it was essential for the success of Birmingham as a city that its citizens should be exposed to good art and design. The Tangye brothers, owners of the famous engineering firm, finally persuaded the city to build a museum by offering £10,000 towards a Purchase Fund. The Purchase Committee collected art and decorative art, including sculpture, paintings, Japanese enamels and gems. Donations included works by the Birmingham artist, David Cox. In 1883 the Committee bought two drawings by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the beginning of Birmingham’s Pre-Raphaelite collection.

  The Prince of Wales opened the new Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery in 1885, with displays focused on art and decorative art. The first Keeper, Whitworth Wallis, actively collected in these areas, making purchasing trips to Egypt, Italy, Paris and Berlin. He encouraged many important donations and added to the Pre-Raphaelite collection, including Ford Madox Brown’s The Last of England, perhaps Birmingham’s best-known work. By the turn of the century the collection had outgrown the 1885 galleries. The city extended them with a bequest from the newspaper proprietor John Feeney, a long-term benefactor who had already donated his collection of Japanese, Chinese and Near Eastern enamel, porcelain, lacquer and arms and armour.

  The Feeney Galleries covered a wider range of subjects, including casts, local history and natural history. Wallis’s successor, SC Kaines Smith, had a background in art and classical archaeology, and broadened the scope of the collection, including more decorative arts, local history and archaeology. Additional venues were opened. Birmingham Museums collected actively, primarily through donation, across a wide range of disciplines.

  After the Second World War, the eminent Director Trenchard Cox and his successor Mary Woodall formed the outstanding collection of European Baroque painting. They acquired early English furniture to furnish Aston and Blakesley Halls, and purchased examples of silver, ceramics and sculpture to provide an overview of the development of European and English art forms from the Renaissance to the early 19th century.

  Mary Woodall’s focus on European Art and ancient civilisations, and her disapproval of `parochial’ Birmingham history led to decisions that are now regretted. Several groups of material were disposed of by sale in the 1950s, including most of the Museums’ collection of South Asian and Far Eastern metalwork and European furniture, together with a significant group of British, mostly Victorian, paintings.

  The decision in 1948 to create a Technical and Science Museum stimulated further collecting of the city/region’s industrial history and working life. The Designated collection of science and industry is of international significance, reflecting Birmingham’s role as the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution and covering the metal trades, jewellery, numismatics, the automotive industry, arms manufacture, machine tools, computing and many other areas.

  In the 1950s the existing Pre-Columbian collection were added to by three major acquisitions in 1951 totalling over 1200 items, further acquisitions in the late 50s and early 60s and finally in 1982 by nearly 800 items from the Wellcome Collection. In the 1930s Birmingham had acquired a substantial collection of European, Cypriot and Near Eastern archaeology, including material from important sites such as Nineveh and Ur, and it continued to collect Near Eastern material from sites including Petra, Jericho, Jerusalem, Nimrud, Ur and Abu Hureyra into the late 1970s, making this collection area comparable to the holdings of the Ashmolean.

  Much of the World Cultures collection was acquired through individual collectors, most notably Arthur Wilkins, Ida Wench and P Amaury Talbot. As the range and quality of the collection increased, Birmingham became the beneficiary of works transferred from smaller, local museums such as Tamworth, Stoke on Trent, Gloucester, Warwickshire, Reading and Shrewsbury, whose world cultures or foreign archaeological material was considered to be of greater relevance within a more comprehensive collection.

  The acquisition in 1965 of the Pinto collection of treen (wooden objects), the finest such collection in the world, brought the museum an outstanding collection relating to everyday life in Britain and Europe from 1500 to 1950. It is frequently cited by the antiques trade.

  Birmingham’s works on paper collection now numbers around 30,000 items. It is particularly strong in works by Pre-Raphaelite artists, but includes many eminent British and European artists, Japanese prints and topographical views.

  The turn of the 21^st century saw a greater focus on pro-active collecting of local history, particularly contemporary material reflecting the histories, stories and experiences of people growing up, living and working in a young, superdiverse and multi-faith city. Collecting programmes included the Millennibrum project and a post-war Birmingham history collecting programme to support the development of new Birmingham History Galleries at the Museum & Art Gallery in 2012. The Anglo-Saxon Staffordshire Hoard, jointly owned with Stoke on Trent, has great resonance for local people and the dedicated gallery opened in 2014 has been very popular. Birmingham Museums had a policy of collecting material from excavations in the five counties of the West Midlands, and now has a major archaeological archive from the region.

  Since the formation of Birmingham Museums Trust in 2012 there has been an even greater focus on collecting Birmingham history, including the HLF-funded Collecting Birmingham engagement-led collecting project, which focused on four inner city areas of Birmingham. This was awarded the Museums Association’s Museums Change Lives Best MCL Project 2018 and the overall Award for Excellence at the Charity Awards in 2019.

  In the last two decades there has been a considerable expansion of contemporary fine and applied art holdings thanks to two major acquisition programmes: the Contemporary Art Society’s Special Collection Scheme, supported by the Friends of BM&AG; and the Art Fund International programme, which enabled Birmingham Museums to develop an outstanding collection of international contemporary art jointly owned with New Art Gallery Walsall, in partnership with the Ikon gallery.

  The development of Birmingham’s nationally important collection would not have been possible without the generosity and support of donors and, in particular, external grant-giving bodies. The contributions of government funds administered by the Victoria & Albert Museum, Science Museum PRISM fund, Art Fund (formerly National Art Collection Fund), the National Heritage Memorial Fund, the Contemporary Art Society, Arts Council England and Heritage Lottery Funds have greatly assisted the development of the collection. The Friends of Birmingham Museums and the Public Picture Gallery Fund have been proactive supporters of acquisitions since their foundation, alongside local and national charitable trusts. In 2020 Birmingham Museums Trust set up an endowment fund to support collection acquisitions, following a very generous bequest in the will of Ivan Witton.

  Source: Collection development policy

  Date: 2020

  Licence: CC BY-NC

• Collection overview (Collection development policy)

  Birmingham Museums Trust has a vast and diverse range of collection of local, regional, national and international significance. The collection areas of Art, Science and Industry, Birmingham History, Numismatics (coins and medals), and the Pinto collection of wooden objects have all been Designated by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport as collections of national importance. The collections of Archaeology, Ethnography and Natural History are recognised as an important regional resource within the West Midlands but also contain many collection areas of national or international significance.

  The following section gives a summary of each area of the collection:

  ART AND DESIGN

  Includes 2D and 3D historic artwork from World, European and British Art; European and British Decorative Art and Design and Dress and Textiles. It is Designated as a collection of national significance and includes many works of art of international significance.

  Collection Size: 58, 805 objects and artworks

  Fine Art

  British Art spans eight centuries, from a 14^th-century Gothic ivory to contemporary art. Outstanding holdings include British 18^th– and 19^th-century watercolours, the finest public collection of art by the PreRaphaelites and their followers in the world and works associated with the Birmingham School. The collection of works by Birmingham-born landscape painter David Cox is unparalleled. The late 19^th-century bronzes associated with the New Sculpture movement and non-figurative contemporary British 20^thcentury paintings is one of the largest and most comprehensive collections outside London. Built up by gift, bequest and purchase, key donors notably include Charles Fairfax Murray, James Richardson Holliday and J Leslie Wright.

  European Art broadly traces the major developments in Western European art from around 1340 to the present day, and features a nationally important collection of 17^th-century Baroque painting. It is complemented by important earlier paintings by Bellini, Botticelli, Petrus Christus, Pietro Lorenzetti and Simone Martini, notable 18^th-century works including paintings by Canaletto and Guardi, and prints and drawings by Pietro da Cortona, Dürer, Rembrandt, Vuillard and Picasso. Predominantly acquired by purchase in the post-War period, later acquisitions include the contemporary art collection with significant examples of paintings, works on paper and time-based media by 15 European contemporary artists, acquired through the Art Fund International scheme.

  Applied Art

  British Decorative Art and Design dates from the medieval period to the present day. It centres on the largest and most comprehensive collection of jewellery, metalwork and glass made in Birmingham between the 18th and early 20th centuries in the UK. Birmingham manufacturers are well represented, from Matthew Boulton’s metalwork to glass by John Hardman & Co and Hardman Powell and F & C Osler & Co. Jewellery, metalwork, ceramics and stained glass by later 19^th– and early 20^th-century British Arts and Crafts makers, particularly those from Birmingham, also feature strongly. Representation of pottery and porcelain factories in the wider Midlands region includes objects from Worcester and Ruskin. English furniture includes 18^th– and 19th =-century pieces, often associated with notable Birmingham figures and produced by famous makers and designers. This includes pieces commissioned from James Newton which comprise the largest holding of this important Regency maker in public ownership.

  European Decorative Art and Design dates from the late Middle Ages to the 20th century including some of Birmingham’s earliest acquisitions, purchased as inspiration for local craftsmen. It includes Italian metalwork, furniture and ceramics that were among early purchases for the Museum’s Italian Gallery, alongside later purchases of objects including German stoneware. Gifts and purchases from larger collections notably incorporate jewellery by leading Italian and French makers from the 19th and 20th centuries and an important collection of Northern European silverware dating from the 16th to 18th centuries. These formerly belonged to collectors of international standing, such as Ann Hull-Grundy and Stefano Bardini, making these groups of objects in Birmingham of considerable importance in terms of European art history.

  Folk Art is dominated by objects gathered during the 20^th century by Edward and Eva Pinto. This internationally important collection of treen comprises small wooden objects used in everyday domestic, craft, rural, trade and professional settings, dating over a period of 500 years and highlighting many regional variations of usage and design across the world. This area also incorporates Estella Canziani’s collection of early 20^th-century Italian folk objects, which she illustrated and published and is therefore unusually well documented and provenanced.

  World Art dates primarily to the 18^th and 19^th centuries, containing objects made in the Middle East, South Asia, Japan and South America. Of particular significance are the Japanese arms and armour and the South Asian metalwork. As a whole the collection is dominated by decorative art, particularly ceramics, metalwork, jewellery, arms and armour, glass, lacquer sculpture and ivory, with objects acquired as inspiration for Birmingham craftspeople (as with European Decorative Art). A small group of modern and contemporary art represents more recent acquisitions.

  Dress and Textiles are predominantly British, dating from the 18th century to the present day but also include a small group of international material dating as far back as the 16^th century from Europe, South Asia and the Middle East. The collection demonstrates a range of different techniques including printing, embroidery, weaving and lace-making from Britain and around the world. The collection of Indian and Near Eastern textiles and a range of textiles associated with or made by William and May Morris are of international significance. The Morris textiles include six tapestry panels from the ‘Holy Grail’ series, which are regarded as one of the greatest achievements of Morris and Burne Jones, and the most significant of all British tapestry schemes. The dress collection follows fashionable tastes, particularly in women’s clothing and was formed largely from the 1930s through donations by famous Birmingham individuals or families. It is regionally significant owing to its long chronological span and its diversity in relation to British fashion.

  HUMAN HISTORY

  This collection area includes material from Birmingham and across the world. It comprises ancient civilizations, British and European archaeology, world cultures (formerly known as ethnography), numismatics and philately, and collections relating to Birmingham and the West Midlands. The Birmingham history and numismatics collection areas are designated as being of national significance, with objects and groups of objects across all collection areas that are nationally and internationally significant.

  Collection Size: 230,000 objects

  Numismatics and Philately

  Numismatics incorporates coins, medals and tokens from around the world, with a focus on Birmingham products. The numismatic collection is characterised by its quality, breadth and depth, covering an extremely broad canvas from some of the earliest coinage to the present day. Of international importance are the British Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, and Norman and medieval coins, because of their scope and the rarity of individual pieces. The Greek, Roman and Byzantine collection illustrates the early development of coinage in Europe, North Africa and the Near East. Material made in Birmingham reflects the city’s history as a major centre of coin production for international markets. There are many products of this local industry in the collection, from products of the Soho Mint dating from the 18th and 19th centuries to 20^th-century material from the Birmingham Mint.

  The philately collection of largely British & European postage stamps was built over a period of 50 years by one of Birmingham’s earliest philatelists. It is considered to be the best general collection of stamps in public ownership outside the British Museum.

  Birmingham History

  The collection reflects the globally important history of the people and city of Birmingham from around 1500 to the present and includes material relating to work, trades and industries, domestic and personal life, community life, and personal items associated with political figures such as Joseph Chamberlain. The collection includes a wide-ranging and rich resource of material culture and oral testimonies which contribute to our understanding of how Birmingham became a global city, while also having a strong relevance to Birmingham communities. It continues to develop rapidly through projects including Millennibrum (2000) and Collecting Birmingham (2015-18), allowing it to better reflect and engage the city’s super-diverse population.

  Topographical Views and Portraits

  The collection was established with the aim of creating a visual resource which documented the changing cityscape of Birmingham, from the earliest known views of the town created in the 18^th century up to the present. Every district in Birmingham is represented. The collection comprises prints, drawings, watercolours, postcards, photographs and paintings depicting Birmingham people and places. Portraits of Birmingham people include artists, political and civic figures, manufacturers and business-people, scientists and medical professionals as well as families, and working people. The collection also includes material depicting parts of Warwickshire, Worcestershire, Staffordshire and Shropshire, as well as Wales and Scotland, reflecting the wider interests of some of Birmingham’s topographical artists.

  West Midlands History & Archaeology

  Birmingham has extensive holdings of provenanced archaeological material from across the West Midlands region, including Birmingham, Solihull, Coventry, Walsall, Sandwell, Dudley, Wolverhampton, Herefordshire, Warwickshire, Worcestershire, Shropshire and Staffordshire. The objects range in date from the Upper Palaeolithic to the post-medieval period, but most are of prehistoric, Romano-British, AngloSaxon or medieval date. Material includes worked flint and other stone, pottery, metalwork, glass, organic material, building materials and documentary archives. The holdings represent both important individual sites, such as Wall, and groups of sites, such as medieval moated sites or prehistoric flint assemblages. There is also a significant collection of architectural fragments and building records, primarily formed in the 1970s-80s. In 2010 Stoke and Birmingham jointly acquired the Anglo-Saxon Staffordshire Hoard, the largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon treasure ever discovered. It consists of over 3,500 artefacts and fragments dating from the 7th century, made from gold, silver and copper alloy, decorated with garnet and fine filigree.

  European Archaeology

  Objects in this collection date from the Palaeolithic to the European Iron Age, with particular strengths in Neolithic material from the Swiss Lakes and Denmark, Spinnes in Belgium and the Eastern European site of Vinca. Palaeolithic sites in the Dordogne valley also feature. Much of the material derives from the collections of individuals who subsequently donated them to Birmingham. Birmingham newspaper proprietor Sir Charles Hyde funded the excavations at Vinca, and also donated material from excavation in Cyprus and Nineveh.

  Ancient Civilisations

  Sir Charles Hyde also funded excavations in Cyprus and at the Mesopotamian city of Nineveh, and donated material to Birmingham. In the 1930s Birmingham contributed to Sir Leonard Woolley’s excavations at Ur, and acquired material from the British Museum. Sir Leonard donated additional material in the 1950s, including the watercolours produced by M Louise Baker to illustrate the excavation report on the Royal Tombs of Ur. Birmingham continued to collect Near Eastern material from sites including Petra, Jericho, Jerusalem, Nimrud, Ur and Abu Hureyra into the late 1970s. This is, alongside the Ashmolean, one of the two largest collections of Near Eastern archaeology outside the British Museum.

  Ceramics, textiles and gold work dating between 1000BC and 1500AD, from the South American civilisations of the Incas, Aztecs and their precursor civilizations, also feature strongly in this collection. Birmingham began to collect Pre-Columbian material before the Second World War. In the 1950s this was added to by three major acquisitions in 1951 totalling over 1200 items, further acquisitions in the late 1950s and early 1960s and finally in 1982 by nearly 800 items from the Wellcome Collection.

  Other collection areas include Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome. A small group of sculptures from the South Asian religions of Buddhism and Hinduism date from the 2^nd-3^rd century AD to the 10^th-11^th centuries AD.

  World Cultures

  The geographical strengths of this collection are Oceania (with a heavy emphasis on the Solomon Islands) and Africa, with smaller groups from Asia and the Americas. The collection spans the 16^th to 21^st centuries, with greater emphasis on the mid-late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. It features functional items of daily use such as basketry, tools and utensils, objects of adornment, textiles and weaponry. Most of the material represents the private collections of individuals with a personal connection with Birmingham or the wider Midlands, who travelled overseas for trade, military or colonial service, missionary work and occasionally ethnographic fieldwork.

  SCIENCE & INDUSTRY

  The collection illustrates Birmingham’s role as the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution and its claim to be the Second City of the British Empire. For 200 years Birmingham traded globally in raw materials and finished products, and it remains a centre of manufacturing and innovation today. As well as documenting the city and region’s development from a centre of craft production through industrial dominance, postindustrial decline and reinvention, it enables Birmingham Museums to challenge accepted histories of industrialisation, empire and innovation. The collection covers five collection areas: manufacturing, engineering, science and medicine, technology and transport.

  Collection Size: 30,000 – 40,000 objects (approx. due to bulk accessioning)

  Manufacturing

  This collection represents over 200 years of manufacturing history from early wooden lathes and hand tools to self-acting machinery and an important firearms collection, including one of the first fully automatic machines. The Birmingham workshop collections are unique in their provenance and completeness, documenting a history of everyday industrial labour, including a complete silversmith’s workshop, a pearl-button workshop, an optician’s workshop, a file-maker’s workshop, and collection of machinery and tools used by pen makers, gunsmiths, wire drawers, metal workers, watch makers, carpenters, coopers, and coach makers. Examples include Bernard Cuzner’s silver workshop containing all of his tools, fittings, and furniture, an important material archive of his trade.

  Engineering

  This collection represents 150 years of engine development, with many unique items of local, national and international importance. The Smethwick engine, designed by James Watt in 1778, is the oldest working steam engine in the world and one of the most important and best known objects in Birmingham’s collection. Matthew Murray’s hypercycloidal straight-line motion steam engine was designed in 1802 and is the oldest working steam engine of compact design. The 1844 Woolrich electrical dynamo was the first commercial generator, while Heaton’s 1794 button shank making machine is one of the earliest examples of self-acting production, capable of performing a series of consecutive operations without resetting.

  Science and Medicine

  This collection reflects the history of instrumentation and scientific research and their applications. The collection includes early plastics, the first pacemaker, a revolutionary prosthetic hip, and an important collection of weights and scales, timekeeping devices and calculating machines.

  Technology

  This collection contains mechanical, optical, and electronic machines in the everyday world from early telecommunications devices to entertainment technologies such as mechanical musical instruments and computers. Unique components such as LEO 1, the world’s first business computer, and Harwell Dekatron, the oldest digital computer form part of the collection alongside one of the country’s first industrial robots. The collection also tells the story of the Birmingham’s continued scientific importance, represented in the collection by Birmingham-made components for the first trans-Atlantic telegraph cable to the large hadron collider at Cern.

  Transport

  This collection reflects the complete history of British transport covering road, rail, air, and canal. The collection includes Britain’s first self-propelled vehicle, Second World War fighter aircrafts and a comprehensive collection of locally made bicycles, cars, and motorcycles.

  There are numerous unique objects of national and often international significance including William Murdoch’s prototype locomotive, the country’s first self-propelled vehicle, and the Napier Railton Mobil Special which held the land speed record from 1939 to 1964. The City of Birmingham locomotive is one of only three surviving LMS Princess Coronation class locomotives. It has been preserved exactly as when it left service. The Peacock is a nationally significant narrowboat made for Fellows, Morton & Clayton of Saltly. It is the only boat of its type never to be altered from its original state.

  NATURAL SCIENCE

  The collection includes entomology, invertebrates, zoology, ornithology, botany and earth science specimens. It is the largest resource of its type in the West Midlands and parts of the collection are nationally and internationally significant.

  Collection Size: approximately 250,000 specimens.

  Entomology

  This collection is focused on British specimens, incorporating a locally significant record of the region’s biodiversity, alongside a smaller number of specimens from Madgascar, Australia and New Guinea. Specimens of Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) and Coleoptera (beetles) dominate forming one of the best collection in the UK. They include the nationally significant The Rev Gorham British beetle collection, which is comprehensive and includes many extremely rare species that are the first records of their type in Britain. While the butterflies from New Guinea are internationally significant as specimens from the collection localities are extremely rare.

  Invertebrates

  Mollusc shells form the largest part of this collection which also includes corals, sponges, crustaceans and echinoderms. These are mostly dried but some are preserved in fluid. The British land and freshwater molluscs collection contains many valuable records of historical snail distribution, which makes it scientifically important. The marine shells are much more international with specimens from most of the world’s seas and oceans.

  Zoology

  This primarily consists of taxidermy and skeletal material of animals. It is dominated by the ornithology collection, which is one of the best in Britain representing all stages of life, incorporating taxidermy and clutches of eggs. There are many rare examples of extinct and endangered species from across the World in the collection, which are of great scientific value. These include the Great Auk, Hua, Passenger Pigeons, Phillip Island Parrot, Ivory-billed Woodpecker and Kakapo. The collection as a whole was developed mainly through donations of specimens from individuals and organisations such as local zoos and the incorporation of collection such as that from Tamworth Castle Museum.

  Herbarium

  This collection is comprised of specimens of flowering plants on herbarium sheets and includes mosses, liverworts, lichens, fungi and wood samples. Acquired through passive collection, it is the largest in the region and contains a unique record of the local flora that is nationally significant. Two significant elements of the herbarium are the Bagnall collection, which is locally significant as it was the basis for the first ‘Flora of Warwickshire’; while the Ick collection is a significant early record of the environment of Birmingham.

  Earth Science

  The earth sciences collection contains a regionally significant collection of local fossils and minerals that tell the story of the Midlands stretching back hundreds of millions of years. The most significant individual fossils are those purchased for display including the Triceratops, a rare example of an American dinosaur skull in a British museum, the 3-dimensionally preserved ichthyosaur and the almost complete fossil crocodile, Metriorhynchus.

  The collection of gemstones is very comprehensive and is the finest outside of the Natural History Museum, London, affirming the importance of the jewellery trade to the history of Birmingham. The Matthew Boulton minerals are a rare example of an intact 18^th century mineral collection and are made more significant by his importance in the history of Birmingham.

  Source: Collection development policy

  Date: 2020

  Licence: CC BY-NC