Track 2
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Section 2. You have some time to look at questions 11 to 16. Now listen carefully and
answer questions 11 to 16. Okay.
Well, first of all, I'll give you a bit of background to the museum and then tell you about
some of the galleries. You probably won't have time to see everything today, so what I
recommend you do is go to the Egyptian room first, because it's everyone's favourite place
and it gets very crowded with the school parties later in the day. Oh, and I should mention
that the photography gallery is undergoing refurbishment at the moment, so while that's
definitely worth seeing, it'll have to wait for another time.
Now, the actual museum building itself is quite interesting. It was designed by a local
architect called William Craven in the 19th century, at a time when the city was developing
rapidly, with new factories to cope with the expansion of the textile industry. The museum's
built in a very similar style to the railway station, which was constructed at around the same
time.
That was designed by another architect, but William Craven did also provide the plans for
the town hall, which was built just a few years later. Construction of the museum began in
1888, with a large team of carpenters, stonemasons and builders. Then, in recent years, it's
been extensively refurbished.
The lovely big windows have been retained to let the daylight flood in, but the award-
winning part of the project was the restoration of the area around the central hall. In
particular, the beautiful wrought iron staircase, which was brought back to its former glory.
Unfortunately, the museum's original tiled floor had to be replaced with new tiles of a
similar design.
It was a very expensive project, and since we don't charge admission fees, we had to find
other ways of funding it. We did get some money from the Department of Culture at
national level, but we had even more generous support from companies and industries here
in the city, who were our main benefactors. However, we do also depend on donations from
people living in the area for the ongoing maintenance of the building.
So, how will the museum mainly be spending its money in the next five years? We already
work with schools and colleges, helping people get a better understanding of all the creative
disciplines. We consider the most important part of our work the restoration of the valuable
historical objects we are lucky enough to have in our position, and this will continue to be
where the most funding is allocated. Of course, it would be wonderful to purchase new
objects for the museum, but we simply don't have the space at the moment.
Well, we do hope you enjoy your day today, but if you would like to learn more about our
exhibits on display here, I suggest you come to one of the Saturday morning lectures which
are given every month by one of our team of experts. Of course, you can pick up leaflets
about the exhibits in most of the galleries too, but you'll only get a basic introduction from
those. We're also working to update our website so that it provides more background on
the exhibits, but that's still at the planning stage.
Before you hear the rest of the talk, you have some time to look at questions 17 to 20 on
page 4. Now listen and answer questions 17 to 20. Okay, now let me just tell you a bit about
what's on at the moment. Well, we're very well known for our collection of 18th century
paintings, both oils and watercolours.
Some of these are English landscapes and portraits, but we also have paintings by other
European artists who were working during this period. If you're interested in art that's a bit
nearer home, the Farnley Collection is a set of drawings by Paul Farnley. He was born in
Ireland, but he came to work here in the city in the early 20th century and then made it his
home.
He worked in a factory but spent his spare time drawing the buildings and urban landscape
of the city and his work has now been collected and displayed here. On a more practical
note, we have a display of kitchen appliances which might interest you. These are the sorts
of things you wouldn't normally expect to see in a museum.
There's an electric potato peeler from the 1970s which sold really well at the time, but no
one's got one now. There are lots of other similar appliances which must have seemed like
great ideas at the time, but which never took off. You might also like to visit the Fashion
Gallery.
This is an exhibition which is running for the next few weeks only and shows men's and
women's fashion from 1900 to 2000, including some of the famous designers of the time.
Okay, so if anyone's got any questions... That is the end of Section 2. You now have half a
minute to check your answers. Now turn to Section 3.
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