Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens

The first recorded fine art acquisition was commissioned by the Sunderland Corporation, a painting of the opening of the new South Dock in 1850.

[2] In 1879, the Museum moved to a new larger building next to Mowbray Park including a library and winter garden based on the model of the Crystal Palace.

[7] Other highlights of the Museum are a stuffed Lion which was acquired in 1879,[8] the remains of a walrus brought back from Siberia in the 1880s and the first Nissan car to be made in Sunderland.

John Morrison wrote an affectionate memoir of the two and a half years he spent working in the museum as a junior curator, starting about 1918, which appeared in the Australian literary journal Overland in 1968.

Sunderland Museum, with six works and 30 on long-term loan, have a Lowry collection surpassed only by Salford and Manchester.

My Daddy Wears one of These, a teacher (himself blind) at Sunderland Council Blind School teaches a blind child the shape of First World War helmets through handling them. Beginning in 1913, John Alfred Charlton Deas, a former curator at Sunderland Museum, organised several handling sessions for the blind. This included an invitation to the school to handle some of the museum collection, which was 'eagerly accepted'.