England Guide
Yorkshire
Millennium Gallery
Opening time: Mon– Sat 10am–5pm, Sun 11am–5pm
Price: Free
Address: Arundel Gate
Website: www.sheffieldgalleries.org.uk
Sheffield's Millennium Gallery backs onto the spectacular Winter Gardens and contains two permanent displays, both specific to Sheffield and its heritage, as well as a couple of galleries for temporary exhibitions. In the MetalworksGallery you can discover why the eighteenth-century city's natural endowments (a fast water supply, forests for charcoal, and gritstone deposits) ensured the rapid development of the cutlery industry. Not surprisingly, the gallery contains the mort extensive collection of Sheffield cutlery in the world, from sixteenth-century knives to designer cleavers.
There's also the highly diverting Ruskin Gallery, based on the cultural collection founded by John Ruskin in 1875 to "improve" the working people of Sheffield. A library of classic nineteenth-century texts ("the working man's Bodleian") is complemented by an intriguing selection of watercolours, sketches, minerals, paintings and medieval illuminated manuscripts, and contrasts with Keiko Mukaide's stunning wall-length glass sculpture, Nature Water.