Bradford new status as the UK’s “most-improved” city will not be a surprise for Bradfordians. The residents have celebrated the rich diversity this city inherits, rather than to hide away from it. Bradford is the undisputed King of curry having won Britain's Curry Capital award six years in a row (2011 - 2016).
Bradford has attracted £1.5 million Arts Council England funds to make Bradford one of its first UK Producing Hubs and £2 million from the same body to become one of its national ‘Creative People and Places in its bid for UK City of Culture in 2025.
Visiting a museum while visiting Bradford is an interesting way for you to get a feel for the area you’re visiting and enhance your experience with rich insights into the history of your destination, all while having fun exploring your new surroundings.
Explore the top museums & Art Galleries in Bradford
1 Cartwright Hall civic Art Gallery
Cartwright Hall has been collecting prints for over one hundred years and its collection includes works by master printmakers such as Francisco Goya, William Blake and Walter Sickert and by modern masters - Pop Artists Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Richard Hamilton. The collection comprises approximately 1,000 oil paintings, which is about a quarter of the total fine art collection. In the early years the accent on collecting was on Modern British Art, often purchased at the annual Spring Exhibition, when artists from the entire country could submit their work.
The new Hockney gallery is divided into key aspects of Hockney’s career – his time at Bradford College of Art, the Royal College of Art in London and the Young Contemporaries exhibition that announced the arrival of British Pop Art, as well as his famous swimming pool series that marks the start of a career.
2 Bradford Industrial Museum
Bradford Industrial Museum is a converted Victorian mill that opened as a museum in 1974. The Museum showcases various displays of industrial life back in the 19th century. There are displays of textile machinery, steam power, engineering, printing machinery and motor vehicles. There are also various mill-workers houses, styled to three different time periods.
On display also are some Jowett cars in the transport gallery.
3 National Science & Media Museum The National Science and Media Museum has 8 floors of FREE galleries and 3 cinemas including the UK's first IMAX.
The museum explores the science and culture of light and sound technologies and their impact on our lives. With the aim of inspiring the scientists and innovators of the future, it invites visitors to see more, hear more, think more and do more.
4 Bolling Hall Museum
Bolling Hall is one of the oldest buildings in Bradford, West Yorkshire. The museum is crammed full of antiques and all the living items from centuries past, a real visual education and a lovely building also. There really is something to interest all the family here and the history in this building is fantastic to see and read about as you go through.
5 Salts Mill
The world’s largest permanent collections of Hockney artworks is housed in Salts Mill, in the UNESCO World Heritage village of Saltaire, not far from Bradford city.
1853 Gallery David Hockney Salts Mill is home to one of the largest collections of David Hockney’s art. On the ground floor you will find the 1853 Gallery which houses a permanent exhibition of works by David Hockney.
On the third floor gallery 3 features Hockney’s triptych showing the same view of a row of trees in Bridlington. The full title is ’25 Trees between Bridlington School and Morrison’s supermarket along Bessingby Road in the Semi-Egyptian style’.
6 Cliffe Castle Museum, Keighley, West Yorkshire.
A listed Victorian building in attractive hillside grounds, with furnished Victorian rooms, as well as important collections in geology, natural history, local history. These include an array of glittering minerals, local rocks and fossils (including a 2m long fossil amphibian), mounted birds and local mammals, original furnished rooms with chandeliers, William Morris stained glass, old dolls, toys and domestic items and a programme of temporary exhibitions.
7 Bronte Parsonage Museum Haworth
Haworth Parsonage was the home of the Brontë family from 1820 to 1861 and the place where Charlotte, Emily and Anne wrote their great novels such as 'Jane Eyre' and 'Wuthering Heights'.
Many of the Brontës' manuscripts and letters are exhibited in the Parsonage along with clothing, furniture and personal possessions belonging to the Brontë family. There are opportunities to marvel at the incredible ‘little books’ and see the table – complete with candle burns and ink stains – where Jane Eyre was written.