The Braithwaite · Galleries 1–7
19 Sep 2026 — 21 Feb 2027
Exhibition No. 214
Ultra marine Helena Marr — Fifty Years of Blue
Seven rooms. Twenty-one works. One colour, followed for half a century from a Cumbrian salt flat to an unfinished room in Orkney.
Adults £22 · Under-16s free · Members free. Timed entry every 45 minutes. Thursday lates until 21:00.
Room 5 · The Void
2003
- 7Rooms
- 21Works, 1971–2024
- 9Lenders, four countries
- 75 minAverage visit
01 — The exhibition
A life spent inside one colour
Curated by Dr Ruth Enderby with Aoife Brennan. Organised by The Braithwaite in partnership with the Halle Verlaine, Antwerp, where the exhibition travels in May 2027.
- Dates
- 19 Sep 2026 — 21 Feb 2027
- Galleries
- 1–7, second floor
- Works
- 21 in total, incl. 3 cyanotype suites
- Admission
- £22 · under-16s free
- Curator
- Dr Ruth Enderby
- Catalogue
- 288pp, £35 · shop
- Supported by
- Kelvin & Chase
Conservation note
Rooms 4 and 7 are lit to 50 lux. The cyanotypes and the late works on paper cannot be shown at full light for more than sixteen weeks in a decade. Give your eyes two minutes at the threshold — the room will look black until they adjust, and then it will not.
Helena Marr was twenty-eight, teaching two days a week in Whitehaven and painting in a rented net loft, when she ground her first half-ounce of lapis lazuli. It cost her a fortnight's wages. She used all of it in one afternoon, on a board eighteen inches square, and later said the panel was worth more than the room she painted it in.
Fifty-three years later she is still working, now from a converted kirk on Hoy. In between she has bankrupted herself twice buying pigment, spent six years making nothing but cyanotypes because the sun was free, and produced — in Room 5 of this exhibition — a wall of saturated blue that the Braithwaite's conservators have measured at 2.44 metres and which several visitors to its first showing in 2004 reported as physically difficult to stand in front of.
This is the first exhibition to gather all seven periods of her work in one building. Nine lenders across four countries have released pieces that have not been in the same room since 1998, including Vat 7 from Antwerp and the unfinished Room with the Window Open, which left Marr's studio for the first time in June 2026.
“People say I paint blue. I don't. I paint what a particular blue costs, and what it does to the wall it is on.” Helena Marr, interviewed in her studio, March 2026
02 — The rooms
Seven rooms, seven blues
The hang follows the pigment, not the biography. Choose a room on the plan to read its wall text, see what is in it, and watch the colour of this page change to the colour of that room. Arrow keys move between rooms.
Salt Flats
1971 — 1978 · Three worksMarr's first blues are cheap and thin, and she knew it.
Works load with the room.
Audio guide Track 02
Typical dwell 9 min
03 — The wall
Twelve works, hung in order
A single continuous hang, 1971 to 2024, in the order you meet them upstairs. Keep scrolling to travel along it — or swipe the rail on a phone.
The hang is drawn when the page loads.
1971
2024
04 — Tickets
Book timed entry
Entry every 45 minutes, 40 people a slot. Capacity is live — sold-out slots close as they go. There is no booking fee, and you can change your slot free of charge up to 24 hours before.
1 · Choose a date
The next fourteen open days. We close on Mondays except bank holidays.
Dates load with the page.
Open · Busy · Last few · Sold out
2 · Choose a time
Slots show places remaining right now. Last entry is at least 90 minutes before we close.
3 · Who is coming
Under-16s and members go free but still need a place in the slot.
Your visit
Choose a date and time
Two adults, date and time not yet chosen.
Free changes up to 24 hours before · Registered charity 1094427 · Gift Aid claimed on eligible admissions only
05 — Press
What they said
Reviewed from the press view on 17 September 2026. The exhibition opened to the public two days later and sold 11,400 tickets in its first six weeks.
Five stars out of five
“The best-hung exhibition in Britain this year. Room five stops you the way weather stops you.”
Five stars out of five
“Fifty years of one colour ought to be a gimmick. It is instead a biography, and a rather unsparing one.”
Four stars out of five
“Marr has spent her working life proving that blue is not a mood. It is a material, and somebody paid for it.”
06 — Programme
Talks, tours and lates
Everything below runs inside the exhibition's five months. Exhibition admission is included unless the listing says otherwise; members book a fortnight ahead of general release.
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Fri 25 Sep19:00 — 20:30Helena Marr in conversation with Dr Priya RavalEnderby Lecture Theatre · 180 seats£12 / £8Returns only
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Thu 8 Oct18:30 — 21:00Late: Ultramarine After DarkGalleries 1–7 · bar in the atrium · DJ Nasreen Okpara£18Book
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Sat 17 Oct10:30 — 12:30Family studio: making blue from a stoneLearning Studio · ages 5–11 with an adultFreeBook
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Wed 4 Nov13:10 — 13:50Lunchtime tour: pigment, trade and the price of colourMeet in the atrium · 40 minutes · 25 placesFree with entryBook
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Sat 14 Nov14:00 — 17:30Symposium: The cost of colour, 1400–2026Enderby Lecture Theatre · six speakers · tea included£25 / £18Book
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Thu 10 Dec18:30 — 21:00Late: Winter Nocturnes with the Verrall QuartetRoom 6 · two 25-minute sets, 19:15 and 20:15£22Sold out
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Sat 16 Jan09:00 — 11:00Relaxed opening: lower light, lower sound, fewer peopleGalleries 1–7 · 60 places · ear defenders availableFreeBook
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Thu 4 Feb18:30 — 19:45Curator's farewell tour with Dr Ruth EnderbyGalleries 1–7 · 30 places · the last one before deinstall£10Book
07 — Visit
Getting here, and in
The Braithwaite sits on the Bridgewater Canal at the Castlefield end of Wharf Street, eight minutes' walk from Deansgate-Castlefield tram stop and twelve from Manchester Oxford Road.
Opening hours · to 21 February 2027
| Day | Museum | Last entry to Ultramarine |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | Closed | — |
| Tuesday | 10:00 — 17:00 | 15:15 |
| Wednesday | 10:00 — 17:00 | 15:15 |
| Thursday | 10:00 — 21:00 | 19:00 |
| Friday | 10:00 — 18:00 | 16:00 |
| Saturday | 10:00 — 18:00 | 16:00 |
| Sunday | 11:00 — 17:00 | 15:30 |
Closed 24–26 December and 1 January. Open bank holiday Mondays, 10:00 — 17:00.
Step-free and access
Level entry from Wharf Street, two lifts to the second floor and a Changing Places toilet on the ground floor. Wheelchairs and perch stools are free to borrow from the cloakroom, no deposit. Assistance dogs welcome throughout.
Low light in rooms 4 and 7
Both are lit at 50 lux for conservation. Large-print wall texts are backlit at the entrance to each, and a torch-free magnifier is available from the invigilator.
Travel
Deansgate-Castlefield tram, 8 minutes. Manchester Oxford Road rail, 12 minutes. No visitor car park — the nearest is Whitworth Street West, 220 spaces, £4.60 for three hours. Six Sheffield stands on Wharf Street.
Bags, coats and photography
Bags larger than 40 × 30 cm go in the free cloakroom. Photography without flash is fine in rooms 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6; the loans in rooms 4 and 7 cannot be photographed at all.
08 — Support
Membership pays for the lighting
Members go free to every exhibition, all year, and bring a guest to the lates. Just over a third of what it cost to bring Ultramarine to Manchester came from members and individual donors.
Under-30
For anyone aged 16 to 29. The cheapest way into every show we put on.
- —Free unlimited entry to Ultramarine
- —£5 tickets to all lates
- —10% off in the shop and café
Individual
Our standard membership. Pays for itself in three exhibition visits.
- —Free unlimited entry, no timed slot needed
- —Two-week priority booking on every event
- —Members' room on the second floor
- —10% off in the shop and café
Joint & family
Two named adults and up to four under-16s at the same address.
- —Everything in Individual, twice over
- —Free places at family studio days
- —Two guest passes a year
Patron
Directly funds acquisitions and the conservation studio. 118 patrons in 2026.
- —Curator-led private views
- —Two studio visits a year
- —Named in the exhibition catalogue
09 — Questions
Before you come
Anything else, the visitor team answer the phone between 09:30 and 17:00, Tuesday to Sunday, on 0161 496 0180.
Closing 21 February 2027 · then it is gone
Stand in front of it
Room 5 is 2.44 metres of pigment and nothing else. No reproduction of it has ever been worth looking at, including the one on our own poster.