EVER taken a sneaky photograph at Modern Art Oxford, even though you knew you weren’t supposed to?

If so, the gallery would like to hear from you.

As the museum in Pembroke Street gets ready to close for six weeks for refurbishment, staff are hunting for photographs taken surreptitiously in the gallery to keep it alive online while it is closed.

Head of marketing Kirsty Kelso said: “We were going through Flickr and there were lots of visitors who had come to the gallery and taken their own photographs, despite signs saying ‘no photography allowed’.

“We were taken aback by how many people had taken them, but we were secretly quite pleased to see people making their own stories about the gallery.”

Staff unearthed more than 500 photographs covering everything from the building itself to the exhibitions — and even one of the ‘no photography’ sign itself.

They have now contacted as many of the photographers as possible and asked them to join a new Flickr group.

The group, No Photography Allowed, will act as an online gallery of visitors’ photographs.

Mrs Kelso said: “We wanted to have an online gallery composed of something submitted by members of the public and we didn’t have a great deal of time to organise something huge or special.

“So we thought ‘let’s see what’s out there already and use that’.

“There are some really nice photographs and some really artistic and creative pictures.”

The gallery closes for a £250,000 facelift on Monday.

When it reopens on Saturday, April 17, it will have a new entrance from St Ebbe’s Street, and a yard transformed into an art and social space.

After the temporary amnesty on photographs, the regulations will be back in place once the gallery reopens with photography strictly forbidden.

Mrs Kelso said: “It is our obligation to protect the work of artists, so we couldn’t possibly condone it.”

Despite the ban, the current exhibition, Pawel Althame’s Common Task, encourages people to dress up in gold spacesuits, exploring their surroundings and photographing themselves.

Post your pictures to the No Photography Allowed Flickr group, or just browse the visitors’ images at flickr.com/ groups/132326@N24/ or go to the gallery’s website, modernartoxford.org.uk