Author Archives: Lorna Frost, Assistant Curator - Image Collections

King’s Cross redevelopment wins heritage award

The redevelopment of Kings Cross Station has been awarded an EU Prize for Cultural Heritage in the area of conservation. The work on Lewis Cubitt’s 1852 Grade 1 listed station built for the Great Northern Railway has transformed the way passengers … Continue reading

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Manchester Piccadilly: a visual history

As a regular visitor passing through Manchester Piccadilly train station, I’ve been interested by some of the paintings and photographs in the collection which give a few insights into its history. I’ve selected some of my favourite images to show … Continue reading

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‘Skegness is SO bracing’ – back to its bracing best

There are now only three weeks left to see our summer holiday exhibition Hints for Holidays, which showcases some stunning examples from our poster collections. John Hassall’s ‘Skegness is SO Bracing’ is one of the most iconic British railway posters … Continue reading

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The railway that brought the beach to your bathroom

Think that a week relaxing at the beach is good for you? In the early 1900s, visiting the coast for a dip in the sea was thought to cure all manner of ailments. But what happened when the summer season … Continue reading

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Summer poster exhibition – the rejects!

I’m currently working on a poster exhibition for the summer entitled Hints for Holidays, all about seaside holidays. It’s a really difficult job to select only 40 or 50 posters from the 11,000+ in the collection, so I thought I’d pick out a few … Continue reading

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Listing a 4000-strong photographic collection

Over the last year a team of volunteers has been working hard to list a collection of approximately 4000 photographic prints acquired from the former North Eastern Railway Headquarters in York (now the Cedar Court Grand Hotel). These have been … Continue reading

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An art gallery, a shire horse and a dray

We’re about to start installing the next exhibition for our Art Gallery. The Art of Advertising will feature posters and paintings from the NRM collection as well as loans from Tate, Bradford Museums and Galleries and York Art Gallery. The exhibition … Continue reading

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Painting conservation for The Art of Advertising exhibition

As part of our preparation for The Art Of Advertising, the next exhibition in the brand new art gallery, we currently have a number of paintings and posters undergoing conservation. I recently went to visit one of the conservators to … Continue reading

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Edward Bawden, printmaker

This week I came across this fabulous linocut depicting Rocket, by the artist Edward Bawden CBE, RA (1903 – 1989). It takes such a great amount of skill and a very gifted eye to condense a complex thing like a … Continue reading

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Norman Wilkinson and the pictorial poster

Random fact of the day – a painting by the renowned railway poster artist Norman Wilkinson hung over the mantelpiece in the smoking room of the Titanic. Wilkinson, being an acquaintance of the captain, also had a tour of the … Continue reading

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