The museum’s highlights include an important Egyptology collection, British fine and applied art, Mass Observation photography, natural history, ethnography and a freshwater aquarium. The paintings collections includes a group of works by Bolton-born artist Thomas Moran and his wife Mary Nimmo Moran, works by Blake, Rowlandson and Turner, and a small selection of Old Master paintings by Colonia, Dughet and Giordano. A new local history gallery tells the story of how Bolton and its people were transformed by the Industrial Revolution.