New town museum opens four years after closure

Swindon's new museum and art gallery has opened to the public, four years after the old one shut down.

The exhibition tracks the Wiltshire town's history right up to the modern era, and displays its large collection of modern art.

The borough council has spent more than £500,000 creating the new venue by converting the upper floor of its Civic Offices.

Swindon Museums manager, Frances Yeo, told the BBC she hopes the new museum would "raise people's aspirations" and "make people think they could be an artist".

She added: "It really makes a difference to the way the town is thought about and how people feel about their own town.

"We stand or fall in terms of our culture, and I really hope that what we've done here helps us to stand."

The museum and gallery was previously housed in Aspley House in Swindon's Old Town, but fell into a state of disrepair after being closed in the first Covid-19 lockdown and is now being sold off for redevelopment.

But the facility has now found its new home in a converted space on the upper floor of the art deco Civic Offices.

Linda Kasmaty, chair of the Friends of Swindon Museum and Art Gallery group, said: "It takes your breath away. In Swindon we deserve it, and it's fantastic.

"We're going to become the cultural centre of the South West.

"This is better than I could have imagined."

The are currently four exhibitions in place at the museum, the first of which explores the story of Swindon's museum told through the pieces it owns.

An art exhibit created by young people focuses on their ideas surrounding identity, while school pupils' work responding to the gallery's collection are also on display.

The space is also home to a travelling exhibition of works by Elizabeth Frink, one of the 20th century’s most important sculptors.

The budget for the new museum and gallery was originally set at £400,000 but has cost £520,000, attributed to a rise in building costs.

Asked if she could justify the amount spent on the art gallery among so many other costs faced by the council, councillor Marina Strinkovsky, Swindon's cabinet minister for culture, said: "I'm not going to play the justifying game.

"I'm not above a Churchillian metaphor, and there's a reason why the theatres in London never closed during the Blitz.

"Art and heritage in a time of crisis is a core British value, that's all the justification there is.

"But what I would say to the cost is it's not either/or. There is no list of potholes we deprioritised because we built the museum."

The museum is now open Tuesday to Sunday from 10:30 to 16:30, and is free to enter.

Follow BBC Wiltshire on Facebook, external, X, external and Instagram, external. Send your story ideas to us on email or via WhatsApp on 0800 313 4630.