Close Looking

I've always liked the Whitworth Art Gallery. I liked it more when I visited the inaugural exhibition after it was refurbished and I like it and its windows in the park still more now. Even more explicitly than the People's History Museum it is asking questions about its place in history, who it represents and promotes, what its responsibilities are and where its money came from. Until today I hadn't known that the Whitworth spanners I had for my first motorbike were named after the gallery's benefactor, Joseph Whitworth, the engineer, entrepreneur and inventor who created an accepted standard for screw threads in 1841.

We gave varying amounts of attention to four very different exhibitions:

Colour is Mine, a major retrospective of Althea McNish, the first Caribbean designer to achieve international recognition and one of the most influential and innovative textile designers in the UK. Fifties and sixties fabrics are what people were wearing during my formative years and I loved the view back.

The Circle and the Square. From the 1960s until its closure in 2010, Brierfield mill in Pendle brought together South-Asian-heritage and white communities as they operated the textile looms side-by-side. When it closed they continued to live in close proximity but grew apart. Suzanne Lacy worked with residents in Pendle for two years and I enjoyed the film she made of people singing together much more than I expected to.

Open House - wallpaper samples began arriving at the Whitworth in 1967 from factories offloading remnants after ceasing production and the gallery now has around 10,000 examples - the largest collection of any museum. We looked at a few, and some classic Martin Parr photos of people in their homes, and I began to feel guilty about the slices of wallpaper from my house now beneath its joists. I meant to collect them to make a collage but given everything else demanding my attention it was too much to think about. Apart from the photos I took, the wallpaper history of my house has vanished.

Still Parents - an exhibition put together by parents who have lost a baby during pregnancy or just after birth. Some had created their own art and some had chosen paintings from the collection that meant something to them. It was moving to see these pictures through their eyes. Since Secondborn came close to being one of those lost babies it was poignant to have her with me and even more so when we unexpectedly came across a picture of her great grandmother nursing her great aunt. (Her paternal line includes an artist who used his wife as a model.)

We got a bit of exercise walking from there to the Northern Quarter, lunch and the bus home.

A thoroughly good three days.