Art Gallery sights in London
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A
National Gallery
Gazing grandly over Trafalgar Sq through its Corinthian columns, the National Gallery is the nation's most important repository of art. Four million visitors come annually to admire its 2300-plus Western European paintings, spanning the years 1250 to 1900. Highlights include Turner's The Fighting Temeraire (voted Britain's greatest painting), Botticelli's Venus and Mars and van Gogh's Sunflowers. The medieval religious paintings in the Sainsbury Wing are fascinating, but for a short, sharp blast of brilliance, you can't beat the truckloads of Monets, Cézannes and Renoirs.
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B
National Portrait Gallery
The fascinating National Portrait Gallery is like stepping into a picture book of English history. Founded in 1856, the permanent collection (around 11,000 works) starts with the Tudors on the 2nd floor and descends to contemporary figures (from pop stars to scientists), including Marc Quinn's Self, a frozen self-portrait of the artist's head cast in blood and recreated every five years. An audiovisual guide (£3) will lead you through the gallery's most famous pictures.
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C
Institute of Contemporary Arts
Housed in a traditional building along the Mall, the ICA is as untraditional as you can possibly get. This was where Picasso and Henry Moore had their first UK shows, and ever since then the institute has sat comfortably on the cutting and controversial edge of the British arts world, with an excellent range of experimental/progressive/radical/obscure films, music and club nights, photography, art, theatre, lectures, multimedia works and book readings. There’s also the licensed ICA Bar & Restaurant. The complex includes an excellent bookshop.
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D
Serpentine Gallery
What resembles an unprepossessing 1930s tearoom in the midst of leafy Kensington Gardens is one of London’s most important contemporary art galleries. Artists including Damien Hirst, Andreas Gursky, Louise Bourgeois, Gabriel Orozco, Tomoko Takahashi and Jeff Koons have all exhibited here.
Every year a leading architect (who has never built in the UK) is commissioned to build a new ‘Summer Pavilion’ nearby, open from May to October. Reading, talks and open-air cinema screenings take place here as well. A new 880-sq-metre exhibition space, the Serpentine Sackler Gallery, will open in 2012 in the Magazine, a former Palladian villa-style gunpowder depot on the far side…
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