Whitworth Art Gallery

The Whitworth has been part of the cultural landscape of Manchester, England, since 1889, when it was created as the first English gallery in a park - the Whitworth Institute - marking the memory of one of the North West's great industrialists, Sir Joseph Whitworth.

Its founding mission was to 'secure a source of perpetual gratification to the people of Manchester and cultivate taste and knowledge of the Fine Arts of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture'.

The Gallery was nicknamed 'Tate of the North', with over 45,000 historic and contemporary objects in the collection, works on paper, wallpapers and textiles which are recognised amongst the finest outside London, and an architectural update by John Bickerdicke, who transformed the Edwardian spaces into modernist open plan.

This concise and informative little book traces the history and development of The Whitworth Art Gallery and its function as a great gallery in a great city.