The Manchester Museum and Art Gallery

#manchestertrips The Manchester Museum and Art Gallery is the local museum service for the borough of Manchester with Darwen Borough Council. It is a museum with collections of Christian icons, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and local history, as well as those of the former Lewis Textile Museum. The museum is in a Grade II listed building, on the corner of Museum Street and Richmond Terrace. It was originally opened as an art gallery and library in 1874, with the library occupying the ground floor and the art gallery on the first floor. The building was enlarged in 1893. In the 1970s, the library moved to Town Hall Street providing more space for the display of the local and social history collections which formed Blackburn Museum & Art Gallery. The museum service was also responsible for the Lewis Textile Museum before it was closed. The contents of the Lewis Textile Museum have now been moved into the main museum building on Museum Street and the gallery which houses the collection of looms renamed Cottontown. The Lewis Textile Museum was bequeathed by Thomas Boys Lewis, a local cotton industrialist.