Manchester: Museum of Science and Industry, Manchester Art Gallery

We now move away from London, finally, to t’north.  Specifically to Manchester, which I know I denigrated in a previous post, but that was advocating visiting a fictional place instead, which you can’t do.  So Manchester it is.  We went to two museums there, which is (obviously) not all you can do, but here’s what you can do if you go to those.  (I’m writing this at 2am, don’t expect it to be excellent-quality journalism.)

Date of trip: Thursday 5th July 2018
Journey time: approx. 2h50 (when the trains are running normally again)
Fare: £53.95 (Off-Peak return, with 16–25 Railcard, though you can probably get it cheaper if you book in advance)

Museum of Science and Industry

Well, I mean, what does the name suggest?  It’s a museum of science and industry.

We started in the Air and Space Hall.  Which, to be honest, was kind of light on the Space, heavy on the Air.  And also heavy on the bicycles, which, last time I checked, did not go into either the air or space.  The main space thing seemed to be a VR exhibition where you could feel like you were in Tim Peake’s spacecraft.

Other attractions included the working engines in the Power Hall and a shoehorned-in display on rubbish (there was a touch screen, obviously installed when touch screens were still exciting, where you had to listen to people’s views on where to place a landfill site, and then pick a site and listen to the people’s reactions to your decision.  For some reason the stereotypical student who was worried it would disturb his radio station).  There was also a ten-year-old telecommunications display, so it was amusing what counted as “modern”, but I did geek out for a solid five minutes about the Linotype machine, and probably for longer about the various artefacts from Coronation Street.

But the main reason to visit is the Station Building.  Why?  Because it was the Manchester station of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway.  This was not the first railway—in fact, it opened in 1830, twenty-six years after the invention of the steam locomotive.  But it was the first “inter-city railway”, and the first to be commercially successful, and hence brought with it the dawn of the railway era.  So that’s, y’know, cool.

The tracks are still there, and until recently they remained connected to the national network, and they ran trains from time to time from the first “proper” railway station.  Unfortunately, to build something called the Ordsall Chord (which was kind of necessary, to be fair) they had to cut it off.  But it’s still an important part of British industrial history, and walking along the station platform felt a bit like being transported back in time.  Well, it did to me.

To be honest, the museum felt quite small to me.  Certainly smaller than I remember, but then the last time I’d been I was small, so it’s not surprising the museum felt big.  And I realise I’ve made this seem railway-focused.  But the friends I dragged along seemed to enjoy it, mostly, so maybe you will too.

(Nearest Metrolink stop: Deansgate-Castlefield.  The Metrolink, if you’ve not heard of it, is Manchester’s tram system.  The trams make a breathy tooting noise when they want to give a warning which can only be described as “cute”.)

Manchester Art Gallery

Well, I mean, what does the name suggest?  It’s an art gallery in Manchester.

It’s a little bit difficult to write about this one, because most of what we spent time looking at were temporary exhibitions, and so if you visited you wouldn’t see them.  For the record, we saw a Sonia Boyce exhibition (I hadn’t heard of her, but they filmed a night-time “takeover” of the gallery that she was involved with and the film was on display; that takeover I had heard of, because it made the news.¹  I didn’t know much about it, though, and the film was mildly odd).  We also saw an exhibition of Nordic Craft and Design, which was more my sort of thing, and there were cute glass birds and stuff, and a mannequin that out of the corner of my eye looked like Dobby, for some reason I can’t quite explain.

We didn’t spend long in the permanent collection.  (Incidentally, protip: if you’re the sort of person that likes sitting in the middle of the floor to look at the paintings, this art gallery doesn’t seem to mind too much, as demonstrated by one of this trip’s group.)  I don’t really know what to say about it, to be honest, except that there’s a reasonably large collection of stuff by L.S. Lowry, one of Greater Manchester’s most famous artists.  I encourage friends who were on this trip to comment if they have any views on art, because, while I enjoy going to art galleries, I’m always nervous I’m going to look foolish, and in fact did best at sounding knowledgeable about art while bullshitting that an empty hallway between galleries was, in fact, an installation.

Also, Wetherspoon’s website says that a copy of one of my favourite paintings, The Last of England, is in Manchester Art Gallery, when in fact the two copies are in Birmingham and Cambridge.  Turns out Spoons is about as much of an authority on art as it is on Brexit.

(Nearest Metrolink stop: St Peter’s Square.  God, I love those breathy toots so much.)

I didn’t take any pictures of the art gallery, so here are some of Manchester instead.

¹ If you can’t be bothered to click on the link,² they temporarily took down a picture with nude women in it to raise questions about the portrayal of women in art, and asked for people’s responses, and they were very angry.

² I’m not sure why I think that if you can’t be bothered to click on the link you’ll bother to read the footnotes either.