Harris Museum, Art Gallery & Library — Attraction in Preston

It's so easy to dismiss your own towns library, museum and art gallery. Sure its a stunningly beautiful building, one of the most iconic in Preston, but it's inside where the changes and the familiarity combine with style, elegance and captivating interest. What always strikes me once you've entered through one of the side entrance is the magnificence of the hall as you enter. The gift shop and helpful advice can be found in the entrance hall, but my eyes are LwYs drawn to the thousands of names listed and fondly remembered for the ultimate service they gave their country during the world wars. All of these names belong to Preston as much as the stone that makes the Harris the building it is. I had the fortune of being taken on a guide of the museum by one of the curators. This carefully choreographed tour gave much more depth than a solitary browse through the museum may do. The Curator brought the costumes to relevance vividly as she did with maps from the area we as a group represented, Ingol. The tour allowed the more able in the group to enjoy the Egyptian Gallery, before we all took an awe inspiring trip to the underground levels in the museum where countless books, displays and object d'arte are kept. Really worth organising if you can bring a group and organise a tour. For those of you who like to navigate round yourself, there is great interactivity all around the museum, no more so than in The Story of Preston. This has been substantially modernised and also allows for school groups or as I saw a speech on Mental Health and the help in the community. As well as fantastic cabinet's with artefacts from all over, the museum also has temporary displays (for example the incredible three dimensional moon display earlier in the year) and very often houses live music, poets, speakers, a really lively soul to a beautiful museum. I consider myself very lucky to have such a beautiful market square and its surrounding building. The Harris is the finest of them all and somewhere I will return over...

I have to say, excellent exhibit for the moon and the planetarium, let down by appalling organisation of tickets for the shows. I turned up at 9am to get tickets for the first showing as I needed to go to work and only had the morning with the kids. I was told that tickets for each of the 5 shows throughout the day would be released an hour before the show and I should come back at 10ish to get tickets for the 1115 show. Now, bearing in mind there are only 20 tickets per show, I thought I would come back at 0945 just to get a chance. Once in, the queue was at least 100 deep and I had no chance of getting a ticket for any of the shows let alone the first and only show I could go to. Then to be told I was so far back in the queue I probably wouldn't get one at all. The organisers were still planning on not releasing tickets for the following shows until an hour before, meaning anyone queuing would have to queue all day to be in with a chance. Disappointing. SORT IT OUT. Two very disappointed kids, and 2 hours...

Modest compared to many of the museums you might find in, say, Liverpool, but the crown jewel of Preston none the less. I don't live in Preston anymore and this is one of the places I miss the most. The staff are extremely knowledgeable and are happy to talk to you in detail about the art, the cafe is reasonably priced and has the most beautiful surroundings and the toilets are well maintained, if not the easiest to access. There's something for everyone here. Fine art, ceramics, textiles and local history all have their own large, dedicated rooms, plus there's a regular rotation of special exhibits. These are often more modern but not necessarily always, and might showcase amateur or student art, the work of a single professional artist, comic book art, prehistory, sculpture etc etc... Basically, despite the size of the building, you could spend hours here! Although I personally preferred to make regular, short visits, to drink up the atmosphere and gaze once again at my...