ABSTRACT
In 2006, the Whitworth staff began planning a project to extend the Gallery and rethink its relationship with the surrounding park to deliver a 21st-century transformation firmly rooted in the Gallery’s original 19th-century mission: to be for ‘the perpetual gratification of the people of Manchester’. Finally completed in 2015, it represents an early example of a museum capital project which explicitly aimed at embracing the green agenda, including removing existing air conditioning and reducing overall carbon footprint while extending physical space. Several years after reopening, it is instructive to examine the extent to which it was able to achieve its aims.
