Image: Manchester Art Gallery
Manchester Art Gallery will open ‘Escapes’, a new collection display exploring the relationship between art, memory and the city’s environment, on 19 September 2026. The free exhibition is scheduled to run until 30 September 2028 and is presented as a look at how landscape imagery offered moments of refuge and imagination from urban life.
According to the gallery’s announcement, ‘Escapes’ will bring together rarely seen Victorian landscapes, objects from the Old Manchester Collection and a recent acquisition. The display is framed around scenes of rolling hills, gardens, castles and coastlines, using those images to trace how artists and viewers have understood landscape as a space of retreat and reflection.
The exhibition is part of Manchester Art Gallery’s collection programme rather than a temporary loan show, and the gallery’s email describes it as a brand-new display. The institution’s notice does not list a full artist lineup, but it does identify one image associated with the presentation: ‘The Minister’s Garden’ by Cecil Gordon Lawson, dated 1878.
Manchester Art Gallery’s announcement places ‘Escapes’ alongside other summer programming, but the collection display is the key new item with a clear future opening date. The gallery says admission will be free, and it directs visitors to more information on its website.
The display also draws on the Old Manchester Collection, a resource that the gallery has been reviewing through its broader collection work. By bringing together historic landscapes and a recent acquisition, ‘Escapes’ appears to connect older civic holdings with more recent collecting activity, while keeping the focus on how images of nature and distance can shape ideas of memory and place.
‘Escapes’ will be shown at Manchester Art Gallery in Manchester from 19 September 2026 to 30 September 2028.
