Reading Room and Gallery
The Special Collections Museum is open, by appointment, to staff and students of Manchester Metropolitan University. Please visit the University’s Library website for more information about how we can support you, both online and in person. We hope to welcome back external visitors later in the year.
The collections are central to the artistic culture and teaching of the faculty and have been since its foundation as the Manchester School of Art in 1853.
The collections include:
The Book Design, Artists' Books and Children's Books collections can be searched on the Library catalogue.
The Manchester School of Art Collection, the archive collections, the Schmoller Collection of Decorated Papers and the poster collections can be searched on the Special Collections catalogue.
Staff and students of Manchester Metropolitan University should contact us in advance to make an appointment to view material from any of these collections and archives in our Reading Room. Please contact us at lib-spec-coll@mmu.ac.uk to make an appointment or for any other enquiries.
The Special Collections Gallery has a programme of exhibitions relating to the collections and also showcases the art and design practice and research of staff and students. Exhibition catalogues and collection publications are available to purchase. To hear about future events and exhibitions join our mailing list by visiting the Special Collections website.
Sign up for news about future exhibitions, events and talks via our email newsletter:
Other ways of keeping up to date:
MMU Special Collections news updates are available by RSS feed and Twitter updates:
To receive news about future exhibitions, events and talks sign up to our e-newsletter.
The Special Collections Museum is closed to the public until further notice.
There's also an archive of previous exhibitions and information about future exhibitions.
All the images on the collections pages can also be viewed at your full screen size.
We'd recommend a screen resolution of at least 800x600.
Maps of our locations and contact details for Staff in the Special Collections.