At last, a reason to visit the Potteries Museum, after a seemingly endless run of unappealing shows. I missed the news of a William Blake exhibition at the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery. It opened before Christmas, is still on and closes on 5th May 2024. So there’s plenty of time yet to see it, perhaps alongside the new Spitfire extension and/or a look to see how political the Natural History galleries have become these days.

Probably on the River Dove in the lower reaches of the Staffordshire Moorlands.

The artist is the Potteries photographer William Blake, not the earlier visionary poet of the same name. On show at the Museum are 50 of the 1,500 Blake images held by the Museum. Perhaps 800 of these appear to be on Staffordshire Past Track. The Warrillow Collection at Keele obviously has more of his, judging by the description of the show, since some pictures have been borrowed from there.

The Museum is closed Mondays and Tuesdays. But is open Wednesday to Saturday from 10am to 5pm, also Sunday from 11am to 4pm.

Update: Visited. A small show, greatly marred by reflective glass and badly positioned lights. Meaning it’s almost impossible to get a clear all-in-view view of most of the pictures as they should be seen. The glass should have been removed, as they’re only prints and not originals. The commentary in the small postcard selection might have mentioned that many homes would have had a postcard magnifier-viewer in the parlour. Lots of political choices of picture, as you might expect. No colorised images to enliven the dour b&w feel of the room. I would have paired it with another room in full colour, of his natural ‘sacred places’ pictures shown as 3ft wide matt prints on blocks without glass. Or backlit.

The Museum’s Natural History galleries continue to be excellent and focused as before on wildlife. The only axe-grinding I saw being the entirely justifiable display about litter.