Imperial War Museum North (sometimes referred to as IWM North) is a museum at in the Metropolitan Borough of Trafford in Greater Manchester, England. One of five branches of the Imperial War Museum, it explores the impact of modern conflicts on people and society. It is the first branch of the Imperial War Museum to be located in the north of England. The museum occupies a site overlooking the Manchester Ship Canal in Trafford Park, an area which during the Second World War was a key industrial centre and consequently heavily bombed during the Manchester Blitz in 1940. The area is now home to the Lowry cultural centre and the MediaCityUK development, which stand opposite the museum at Salford Quays.
The museum building was designed by architect Daniel Libeskind and opened in July 2002, receiving 470,000 visitors in its first year of opening. It was recognised with awards or prize nominations for its architecture, but has also been criticised for poor energy efficiency. The museum features a permanent exhibition of chronological and thematic displays, supported by hourly audiovisual presentations which are projected throughout the gallery space. The museum also hosts a programme of temporary exhibitions in a separate gallery. Since opening, the museum has operated a successful volunteer programme, which since January 2007 has been run in partnership with Manchester Museum. As part of a national museum, Imperial War Museum North is financed by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and by self-generated income. Admission is free.
Read more about Imperial War Museum North: Planning and Construction, Exhibitions, Reception, Volunteer Programme
Famous quotes containing the words imperial war, imperial, war, museum and/or north:
“Their bodies are buried in peace; but their name liveth for evermore.”
—Apocrypha. Ecclesiasticus, 44:14.
The line “their name liveth for evermore” was chosen by Rudyard Kipling on behalf of the Imperial War Graves Commission as an epitaph to be used in Commonwealth War Cemeteries. Kipling had himself lost a son in the fighting.
“If you are ambitious of climbing up to the difficult, and in a manner inaccessible, summit of the Temple of Fame, your surest way is to leave on one hand the narrow path of Poetry, and follow the narrower track of Knight-Errantry, which in a trice may raise you to an imperial throne.”
—Miguel De Cervantes (1547–1616)
“We are constantly thinking of the great war ... which saved the Union ... but it was a war that did a great deal more than that. It created in this country what had never existed before—a national consciousness. It was not the salvation of the Union, it was the rebirth of the Union.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“When I go into a museum and see the mummies wrapped in their linen bandages, I see that the lives of men began to need reform as long ago as when they walked the earth. I come out into the streets, and meet men who declare that the time is near at hand for the redemption of the race. But as men lived in Thebes, so do they live in Dunstable today.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I know no East or West, North or South, when it comes to my class fighting the battle for justice. If it is my fortune to live to see the industrial chain broken from every workingman’s child in America, and if then there is one black child in Africa in bondage, there shall I go.”
—Mother Jones (1830–1930)