A charity is urging more people to attend art galleries or risk losing them as it emerged that a city centre gallery will close to make way for the new City Library.

The BD1 Gallery, situated at City Park, will move in December to Cartwright Hall to make way for the new library.

But charity Friends of Bradford Art Galleries and Museums, which has 250 members, said that Cartwright Hall does not have any more exhibition space, so the BD1 gallery is effectively being lost.

It has warned that low footfall figures make decisions like closing art galleries and museums much easier.

The Friends group has done a lot of work at the Industrial Museum, volunteer at Cartwright Hall and get involved in the Saltaire Arts Trail and other arts-related events across the district.

The Telegraph & Argus exclusively revealed last week that City Library will open in December next to City Park, to replace Central Library after it was discovered work to make that building safe would take too long.

Adrian Manning, the chairman of the Friends group, created 50 years ago to promote art, history and cultural heritage, said: “BD1 is in effect closing and we are losing a gallery in order to gain the library, partly because of footfall because a lot of people use the library and obviously not so many use the gallery.

"People need to be aware if they want the gallery and museums they have to use them.”

Councillor Susan Hinchcliffe, executive member for culture, said that Impressions will remain as a city centre gallery attracting 50,000 visitors a year.

She said: “The BD1 space, however, will make a great City Library which is something absolutely essential to Bradford's future.

“We have ambitions to attract artistic blockbusters to Bradford which will draw in people from all over the region and beyond.

“It can take the curatorial team two to three years to organise a significant exhibition and our curators, who are currently very stretched across the two galleries, will now have the time to work on attracting exhibitions which will put Bradford on the map.

“Also concentrating on one site will mean we have the money to invest in the temporary exhibition spaces at Cartwright Hall so that we are able to host important loans and prestigous collections which would otherwise be difficult to attract.”