The University of Salford has benefitted from some very generous gifts over the last 50 years and we are now actively building the collection through purchase and donation.  The collection is wide ranging and includes prints from the Manchester Print Workshop dating from the 1970s, and photographs of the Great Depression by major American photographers such as Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee and John Vachon. 

We were recently given a collection of still photographs by Michael Goodger, a former lecturer, who made a series of films about the clearance of the Salford slums in the late 1960s.

Paintings

Among our most important paintings are a Tyneside shipping scene by L.S. Lowry and a group of Manchester paintings by Salford artist Harold Riley from the late 1960s and ‘70s. A new painting of Salford Quays has just been commissioned by Liam Spencer.  
The University has recently received a major gift of paintings and prints by South African-born artist Albert Adams, a gifted Expressionist artist who studied with Oscar Kokoschka and was at the Slade School of Art with Harold Riley. 

The Albert Adams archive includes over 100 prints and paintings by Albert Adams as well as African tribal art and South Asian textiles.

Prints

We have recently acquired work by contemporary printmakers whose work references Pop Art, notably Gavin Turk and Gary Hume . In the 1960s and ‘70s the University bought examples by leading British printmakers including David Hockney, Patrick Hughes and Joe Tilson.

New Media     

Major additions to the collection in the last two years include artists’ films by Christian Marclay, Sam Taylor Wood, Robin Rhode and Mark Leckey

Photographs

We are actively developing this area of the collection and have recently acquired a group of photographs by Darren Almond Celebrity pop and rock photographer Harry Goodwin has recently donated an archive of his work as well as a number of signed prints. 

Public Art

William Mitchell’s ‘Minute Men’ sculptures can be seen at our Frederick Road campus and Walter Kershaw’s tile mural ‘Antoinette’ is on public display in the recently refurbished Chapman building and Walter Kershaw’s tile mural ‘Antoinette’ is on public display in the recently refurbished Chapman building.