Encyclopedia > Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery
The museum building.
The Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery is a large museum and art gallery in Bristol, England. The museum includes sections on natural history, local, national and international archaeology and local industries. The art gallery contains works from all periods, including many by internationally famous artists, as well a collection of modern paintings of Bristol.
The museum is housed in a building purpose built by the wealthy Wills family who made their fortune importing Tobacco to Bristol.
The museum is run by the city council with no entrance fee. The museum holds designated museum status, granted by the national government to protect outstanding museums.
The museum is housed in a building purpose built by William Henry Wills, of the Bristol tobacco trading family, as a gift to the city. The building is of Edwardian Baroque architecture and is situated in Clifton, about half a mile from the city centre.
Bristol’s premier museum and artgallery, this magnificent building houses important collections of minerals and fossils, natural history, eastern art, world wildlife, Egyptology, archaeology and seven galleries of fine and applied art.
It is one of the few Museums to have been awarded Designated status by the Government - the mark of an outstanding museum.
Bristol was a key port when the slave trade was at its height in the 17th and 18th centuries. This walk takes visitors to sites around the port city that are connected to the trade and the campaign for its abolition.
The 19th C Bristol School of Artists gallery is the subject of a major re-display due to open autumn 2005 and you will play a significant role in contributing towards the completion of this project.
Bristol is a dynamic, ambitious and multi-cultural European city, acknowledged as a center of cultural excellence.
BristolCity Council is transforming its cultural facilities with investment in its Museums, Galleries and Archives Services thanks partly to the Renaissance in the Regions initiative and through major lottery funded projects, which include the creation of a new Museum of Bristol.
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