National Science and Media Museum
The National Science and Media Museum, located in Bradford, West Yorkshire, is part of the national Science Museum Group in the UK. The museum has seven floors of galleries with permanent exhibitions focusing on photography, television, animation, videogaming, the Internet and the scientific principles behind light and colour. It also hosts temporary exhibitions and maintains a collection of 3.5 million pieces in its research facility.
The venue has three cinemas, including Europe's first opened IMAX screen, finished in April 1983. It hosts festivals dedicated to widescreen film, video games and science. It has hosted popular film festivals, including the Bradford International Film Festival, until 2014.
In September 2011 the museum was voted the best indoor attraction in Yorkshire by the public, and it is one of the most visited museums in the north of England. the museum, in response to revenue shortfalls, has controversially adopted a policy of focusing on "the science and culture of light and sound"—to the exclusion of what are seen as "unsustainable" aspects of creativity and culture, such as past film festivals.
In March 2016 a £7.5 million five year investment plan in the museum was revealed by the Science Museum Group. In March 2017 its name was changed from National Media Museum to National Science and Media Museum.
In July 2023, the museum closed temporarily until 2025 as part of a project to construct two new galleries which will open in summer 2025 as of 16 January 2025 the museum has since reopened to visitors.
Building and admission
Entrance is free, with the exception of cinema screens. The museum is open 10 am until 6 pm every day. The museum underwent a £16 million refurbishment in 1998, developing a new digital technology gallery. This new development created a new glass-fronted atrium, which houses a new café and shop.Galleries
There are six permanent exhibitions:- Kodak Gallery – The Kodak Gallery takes the viewer on a journey through the history of popular photography, from the world's first photographs to the digital snapshots of today. Most of the items on display in the gallery are taken from the museum collection of 35,000 objects and images donated by Kodak.
- Wonderlab – Explores light and sound through interactive exhibits and live experiments. Opened in 2016, replacing the Experience TV gallery.
- Power Up – Playable classic games in their original arcade or console formats; the history of video gaming; the story behind this global phenomenon.
- Sound and Vision – new galleries exploring the history of sound and vision technologies. Opened in 2025.
Cinemas
The museum also incorporates the Pictureville Cinema – opened in 1992 and described by David Puttnam as 'the best cinema in the world', Pictureville Cinema screens everything from 70 mm to video; from Hollywood to Bollywood; from silents to digital sound, with certifications in presentation including THX in sound and picture and the Dolby EX system. In 2008, the cinema presented the only true recorded public screening of Danny Boyle's 2002 film Alien Love Triangle.
Pictureville Cinema is one of only three public cinemas in the world permanently equipped to display original 3-strip 35mm Cinerama prints, and is the only public Cinerama venue in the UK. Cinerama films are screened at the annual Widescreen Weekend film festival.
The Cubby Broccoli Cinema, contains 106 seats and is used for a variety of film shows. In 2012, it was one of three venues in the UK to screen the Olympic Opening Ceremony in Super Hi-Vision.
Insight
Insight is a facility where members of the public can view parts of the collections which are not on general display.Collection
The museum's collection contains 3.5 million items of historical, cultural and social value. Notable objects and archives include:- The first photographic negative
- The earliest television footage
- The world's first colour moving pictures
- Louis Le Prince's 1888 films Roundhay Garden Scene and Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge
- A collection of 35,000 objects and images donated by Kodak Ltd.
- A collection of around 1,000 historical objects from the BBC
- The photographic archive of the Daily Herald, comprising millions of images
- The photographic archive of Tony Ray-Jones
- Original toys from the BBC series Play School – the first programme on BBC2
- Objects and designs used in the making of Hammer horror films
The collection of the Royal Photographic Society was transferred to the Museum on behalf of the nation in 2003., most of the collection is moving to the Victoria and Albert museum in London. The National Science and Media Museum "will retain collections that help explore the development of photographic processes, such as the Kodak collection; the cultural impact of photography, such as the Daily Herald archive; and archives that have a direct relevance to Bradford."
History
National Museum of Photography, Film and Television
The museum occupies a site originally proposed for a theatre in central Bradford, for which work had been begun in the 1960s but which remained unfinished. Discussions and a decision between Dame Margaret Weston of the Science Museum, London, and Bradford's city councillors led to the establishment of the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television, as it was then called, which was opened on 16 June 1983.Local funding for architectural work complemented the Science Museum's funding to convert the building to its new use, with the bars and dressing rooms of the original theatre layout being converted to galleries, and with the conflicting demands of a theatre building occupying multiple storeys and a museum that would ideally reside on a single level needing to be accommodated. The museum's centrepiece was its auditorium with IMAX cinema, and its opening launched "the largest cinema screen in Britain": the IMAX screen was five storeys high with six-channel sound. During this period the museum specialised in the art and science of images and image-making. Colin Ford, its first director, believed that understanding how images are made led to better appreciation of the ideas expressed, the intentions and skills of the image-makers.
In 1986, to mark the 50th anniversary of the first public television service, two interactive television galleries were developed. These allowed visitors to directly operate cameras on a studio set with programmed sound and lighting, use vision mixers, read news items from an autocue and discover how chroma keying works. In 1989, to celebrate the 150th anniversary of photography, the museum launched the Kodak Gallery, a display of the history of photography from its invention to the present. This was followed by the installation of a standard television studio, first used by TV-am for outside broadcasts and, later, Nickelodeon. These studios were the first live broadcasting studios in a museum.
While continuing to run the Pictureville Cinema and exhibitions in a temporary venue on the other side of the city, the museum closed its main site on 31 August 1997 to allow for a 19-month, £16 million redevelopment, making the museum 25% bigger. The IMAX cinema was also developed to show 3D films. The new museum was opened on 16 June 1999 by Pierce Brosnan.
National Media Museum
On 1 December 2006, the museum was renamed the National Media Museum, and two new £3 million interactive galleries were opened: Experience TV, now replaced by Wonderlab, and TV Heaven, now the BFI Mediatheque. The interactive galleries were intended to represent the past, present and future of television and displayed scientific exhibits, such as television inventor John Logie Baird's original apparatus, and television ephemera such as one of the only surviving Wallace and Gromit film sets and Play School toys. TV Heaven was a unique viewing facility where visitors could access an archive of more than 1000 programmes covering sixty years of British television history. TV Heaven closed in 2013, but 50 titles are still available via the BFI Mediatheque.In 2009 the museum partnered with other bodies from the Bradford district in a successful bid to become the world's first UNESCO City of Film.
In February 2010, the museum unveiled a major revamp of the foyer. The remodeling included a brand new Games Lounge, a new gallery that drew on the National Videogame Archive established in 2008 in partnership with Nottingham Trent University. It was originally intended to be temporary, but one in five visitors to the Games Lounge named it as their favourite part of the museum, resulting in the creation of a permanent version in another part of the museum.
In March 2012 the museum opened Life Online, the world's first gallery dedicated to exploring the social, technological and cultural impact of the Internet. The permanent gallery was initially accompanied by a temporary exhibition, ": Is the internet you know under threat?" The exhibition was an exploration of the open source nature of the Internet, and the current threats to both net neutrality and the general continuation of the open source culture.
In October 2014 the museum entered into a partnership with Picturehouse Cinemas, with the national chain taking over the running of the three cinema screens in a bid to boost audience figures and revenue. The partnership was designated "Picturehouse at the National Media Museum". Despite sustained growth in ticket sales, the museum cancelled its participation in the 2015 Bradford International Film Festival and followed up by totally withdrawing from the festival the following year. This move, together with the 2016 transfer of a major photographic collection to London's Victoria and Albert Museum was very controversial.
In August 2016, the museum confirmed plans to permanently close their Experience TV gallery, after ten years, on 30 August 2016. A new gallery would open in the spring of 2017, called Wonderlab, which allows visitors to explore the sciences of light and sound in interactive exhibits. The television collection previously on display in Experience TV were made available for viewing through the Insight Centre at the museum.