Works of art outside the museum too
Working in Blackburn town centre has its advantages. Loads of shops, good transport links, plenty of food and drink outlets and a few remaining good pubs. There are also plenty of things to do. One of which is being able to learn about Blackburn’s culture by going for a look around the museum and art gallery.
When I was young it was both our library and museum, on Library Street itself. But when the old Coop Emporium became Blackburn’s excellent central library, our museum and art gallery copped for all of their building. They even had an unusual occurrence of seeing the name of their road changed to its more appropriate one we now know as Museum Street.
I used to find it rather unnerving as a child seeing how eyes of faces in paintings seemed to follow you around the gallery. Fortunately those people in the paintings were all as dead as the stuffed animals and my childhood favourite exhibit – the mummy. She was one lady who really did give my friends and I the creeps.
Many people consider Blackburn Museum to be our town centre’s finest building. I particularly like the carvings decorating its walls on Museum Street and Richmond Terrace. But not everything is as it seems. You only really see two sides of this story. The museum’s right hand front side is obscured by a back alley. Even worse, when you look at the building from Exchange Street, you are met with a flat blank wall. Just down the terrace you have another even bigger square of blankness. This belongs to Blackburn’s masonic hall, where going back to square one is supposed to be part of their rituals anyway.
Ideally it would be nice one day to see the back end of our museum have an exterior of a similar character in keeping with its other outside walls. Maybe a way of helping to pay for future renovations would be to use this blank wall to help pay for its keep. From Exchange Street, you have a really good view of this wall, apart from it being partly obscured by a couple of trees.
Perhaps a good way of raising money would be to use the wall as a billboard for advertising. Many people pass this way through the town centre every day. On Saturday afternoons there is a steady stream of cars inching their way on to the Shopping Mall car park. No doubt many motorists and their passengers, over the years, have had plenty of time to take in all the views of Richmond Terrace. The museum might as well take advantage of this captive audience.
But what could be more fitting than Blackburn’s museum and art gallery advertising itself? They have the strategic location, they have a large flat surface and they have plenty of space for a billboard.
