National Media Museum

New galleries and additions to the collection made for a stand-out year in Bradford.

The National Media Museum cares for more than 3.5 million significant items, including the collections of National Photography, National Cinematography, National Television and National New Media.

This year, we added the BBC TV Heritage technical collection and the National Videogames Archive from BFI, and began to receive the personal collection of world-renowned animation master Ray Harryhausen.

Exterior of the National Media Museum, Bradford

The opening of the Life Online permanent gallery in the foyer was a serious benchmark for the Group as a whole. Other standout exhibitions included In the Blink of an Eye, demonstrating techniques for simulating motion through photography, and The Lives of Great Photographers which drew exclusively from the Museum’s holdings, including work by Muybridge, W H F Talbot and Julia Margaret Cameron. New work from Afghanistan has also been commissioned by the Museum from Magnum photographer, Donovan Wylie.

To further raise the Museum’s profile in 2013, the Group’s landmark project will be to open a flexible new permanent gallery called Media Space within London’s Science Museum, aiming to generate a two-way exchange of attractions.

Recent acquisitions at the National Media Museum

  • Panasonic colour television receiver with fastext, model TX-3370GR, 1987
  • Six digital c-type prints by Edmund Clarke from the SSSI series, printed by Genesis-Digital, London, 2011
  • Broadcasting Handbook, Olympic Games, London, 1948, issued by the BBC
  • Manuscript for the song 'Here’s Looking at You', written by Ronnie Hill to launch the BBC Television service in 1936
  • Collection of animation sets, models and equipment (above) used by the Bolex brothers in the creation of their work, particularly The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb, 1993
  • Wireless licence savings bank (with one sixpence piece), 1930s
  • Sony Betamax video recorder with Sony Trinitron television console, model LV-1901D, 1975
  • The Lambie Nairn Agency Archive comprising objects relating to the history of film and television, Martin Lambie Nairn, 1970s-90s
  • Photograph by Boyd Harnell, gelatin silver print, John F Kennedy pre-election press conference in San Diego, 1960
  • Three cartes de visite by the pioneering British photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, known for her portraits of celebrities, 1860s.

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