Bedford Tourism Office

Cecil Higgins Art Gallery & Bedford Museum

The Museum and gallery complex is now closed for a major redevelopment project
This eagerly-awaited redevelopment, with the integration of buildings and addition of new services, requires the closure of all the art gallery and museum facilities. Bedford Museum is now closed to the public, and over the coming weeks and months all of the much-loved museum artefacts will be carefully packed away and stored off-site by a team of art gallery and museum staff, before the building works begin next year.

Bedford Gallery will remain open until April 2011 showing ‘High Kicks and Low Life: Toulouse-Lautrec Prints’ on tour from the British Museum from January 13th – April 10th 2011. Bedford Gallery is one of just four venues in the UK, including the National Museum of Wales, selected to display the works. The works from the British Museum will be accompanied by works from the Cecil Higgins Collection by Toulouse-Lautrec and his contemporaries.

All facilities will be closed from April 2011. Building work is expected to start in May 2011 for approximately 12 months, followed by a full re-fit of all galleries and the re-display of collections which will take a further 6 months. Facilities are scheduled to re-open in late 2012/early 2013.
The £6.6m redevelopment project will involve the complete redesign and redisplay of the galleries in Cecil Higgins Art Gallery & Bedford Museum. The new facilities will be an excellent resource for local people and visitors to Bedford right in the heart of the cultural quarter at Castle Lane.

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