National Media Museum - History

History

The museum is on the site of a former theatre and art gallery in the centre of Bradford and came about as the result of discussions between Dame Margaret Weston and Bradford city. The National Museum of Photography, Film and Television, opened to visitors on 16 June 1983. The museum launched Britain’s largest cinema screen, IMAX, five storeys high with six-channel sound, on the same day. At the time, it specialised in the art and science of images and image-making. Colin Ford believed that understanding how images are made led to appreciation of the ideas expressed and the intentions and skills of image-makers. To mark the 50th anniversary of the first public television service, two interactive television galleries were developed in 1986. These let visitors operate cameras on a studio set with programmed sound and lighting, use vision mixers, to read a news item from an Autocue and discover how Chromakey works. These exhibits survived until the renaming of the museum in 2006.

In 1989, to celebrate the 150th anniversary of photography, the museum launched the Kodak Gallery, some of the 10,000 items illustrating popular photography from its invention. This was followed by 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. Today, the equipment is used to teach students from the School of Informatics at the University of Bradford, with whom the museum has a partnership for BSc and BA courses in media and television. In 1994, TV Heaven was launched, making accessible the museum's collection of television programmes, most of which not available elsewhere.

While continuing to run the Pictureville Cinema and exhibitions in a mill 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 percent bigger. The IMAX cinema was also developed to show 3D films. The new museum was opened on 16 June 1999 by Pierce Brosnan, making the museum one of the most popular in the UK.

On 1 December 2006, the museum was renamed the National Media Museum. Alongside this the museum opened Experience TV and TV Heaven - new £3 million interactive galleries dedicated to the past, present and future of television. From John Logie Baird's original apparatus to a Jim'll Fix It badge; where important televisions and studio cameras sit alongside Wallace, Gromit and the Play School toys. The Museum created the only gallery of its kind in Europe, putting hundreds of objects from the Museum Collections on display.

In 2009 the Museum partnered other bodies from the Bradford District in a bid to become the world's first UNESCO City of Film. The bid was accepted, and the title was awarded to the City of Bradford by the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization.

A major revamp of the Museum foyer was unveiled in February 2010 including a brand new Games Lounge, a new temporary gallery drawing on the National Videogame Archive established in 2008 in partnership with Nottingham Trent University; a new box office; a relocated and redesigned shop and new signage throughout the Museum. One in five visitors to the Games Lounge named it as their favourite part of the Museum.

In March 2012 the Museum opened the world's first gallery dedicated to exploring the social, technological and cultural impact of the internet. Life Online covers two spaces within the Museum. The first is a permanent exhibition in the foyer with the second being a changing temporary exhibition on Level 7. The first exhibition to feature is : Is the internet you know under threat? - an exploration of the open source nature of the internet and the current threats to net neutrality which could signify the end of this culture.