Gallery sights in London
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Tate Modern
One of London's most popular attractions, this outstanding modern and contemporary art gallery is housed in the creatively revamped Bankside Power Station south of the Millennium Bridge. A spellbinding synthesis of funky modern art and capacious industrial brick design, the eye-catching result is one of London's must-see sights. Tate Modern has also been extraordinarily successful in bringing challenging work to the masses while a stunning extension is under construction, aiming for a 2016 completion date.
The multimedia guides (£3.50) are worthwhile and there are free 45-minute guided tours of the collection's highlights (Level 3 at 11am and midday; Level 5 at 2pm and…
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Guildhall Art Gallery & Roman London Amphitheatre
The gallery of the City of London provides a fascinating look at the politics of the Square Mile over the past few centuries, with a great collection of paintings of London in the 18th and 19th centuries, as well as the vast frieze entitled The Defeat of the Floating Batteries (1791), depicting the British victory at the Siege of Gibraltar in 1782. This huge painting was removed to safety just a month before the gallery was hit by a German bomb in 1941 – it spent 50 years rolled up before a spectacular restoration in 1999.
An even more recent arrival is a sculpture of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher, which has to be housed in a protective glass case as the Iron…
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Dulwich Picture Gallery
The UK’s oldest public art gallery, the small Dulwich Picture Gallery was designed by the idiosyncratic architect Sir John Soane between 1811 and 1814 to house nearby Dulwich College’s collection of paintings by Raphael, Rembrandt, Rubens, Reynolds, Gainsborough, Poussin, Lely, Van Dyck and others. Unusually, the collectors Noel Desenfans and painter Sir Peter Francis Bourgeois chose to have their mausoleums, lit by a moody lumière mystérieuse (mysterious light) created with tinted glass, placed among the pictures. In the Wolfson Room, seek out ‘Bridge in an Italian Landscape’ by Adam Pynacker, with its masterful use of light. Celebrating its bicentenary in 2011,…
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Royal Academy of Arts
Britain’s first art school was founded in 1768 but the organisation moved here onlyin the fol-lowing century. The collection contains drawings, paintings, architectural designs, photographs and sculptures by past and present Academicians such as John Constable, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough, JMW Turner, David Hockney and Norman Foster. Highlights are displayed in the John Madejski Fine Rooms, which are accessible by free guided tours (1 hr; h1pm & 3pm Wed-Fri, 1pm Tue, 11.30am Sat). The displays change regularly.
The rooms themselves are a treat; it was in the Reynolds Room for instance that Charles Darwin first presented his groundbreaking ideas on…
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Photographers’ Gallery
This fantastic place was in the midst of a substantial refurbishment program at the time of writing and planned to reopen with a bang in early 2012, with three floors of exhibition space, a brand new cafe and a shop brimming with prints and photography books. The gallery awards the prestigious annual Deutsche Börse Photography Prize, which is of major importance for contemporary photographers; past winners include Richard Billingham, Luc Delahaye, Andreas Gursky, Boris Mikhailov and Juergen Teller.
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White Cube Gallery
This central sister to the Hoxton original hosted Tracey Emin’s first exhibition in five years, ‘Those who suffer Love’, in 2009. Together with the massively publicised Damien Hirst ‘For the Love of God’ exhibition two years before, it brought back some of the publicity for the (now not-so-young) Young British Artists (YBAs). Housed in Mason’s Yard, a traditional courtyard with brick houses and an old pub, the White Cube looks like an ice block – white, straight-lined and angular. The two contrasting styles work well together and the courtyard often serves as a garden for the gallery on popular opening nights.
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Courtauld Institute of Art
Immediately to your right as you enter the grounds of Somerset House from The Strand, you’ll find the Courtauld Institute of Art, a superb gallery connected to the Courtauld Institute of Arts, Britain’s foremost academy of art history. Have an uncrowded stroll between the walls of this wonderful place, and see work by Rubens, Botticelli, Cranach, Cézanne, Degas, Renoir, Manet, Monet, Matisse, Gauguin, Van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec, to mention but a few. There are lunchtime talks on specific works or themes from the collection at 1.15pm every Monday and Friday. A little cafe and the plush Admiral 2 restaurant provide sustenance.
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Whitechapel Art Gallery
A firm favourite of art students and the avant-garde cognoscenti, this gallery provides a less cliquey forum for modern art than the White Cube in Hoxton. The gallery is currently under expansion, but should be offering its full exhibition programme by the time you read this. There is also a small but perfectly formed dining room with high-profile chef Maria Elia at the helm. The menu is short but comprehensive with things like roast rabbit, grilled sea bream and inventive vegetarian dishes.
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White Cube Gallery Hoxton Sq
Jay Jopling, dealer to the stars of the Brit Art firmament, made his reputation in the 1990s by exhibiting then-unknown artists such as Damien Hirst, Antony Gormley and Tracey Emin. This Hoxton Sq cube is aptly named and, while the gallery is now part of Britain’s ‘new establishment’, it’s always worth a visit just to have a look at the latest shows. There’s another White Cube in St James’s.
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Building Centre
Interested in where London’s architecture is headed? Visit the New London Architecture website or the Building Centre. Along with changing exhibitions and an outstanding bookshop, it has a 1:1500-scale diorama model of London continually updated and covering everything from Paddington in the west to the Royal Docks in the east and from Battersea in the south to King’s Cross in the north.
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Bankside Gallery
Home of the Royal Watercolour Society and the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers, this friendly, upbeat place has no permanent collection, but there are frequently changing exhibitions of watercolours, prints and engravings (many for sale). Call ahead or visit the website for details of events, such as evenings on which artists talk about their work.
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APT Gallery
Creekside street running parallel to Deptford Creek is lined with galleries and artists’ studios that have regularly changing art exhibitions, including APT Gallery.
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Art Hub
Creekside street running parallel to Deptford Creek is lined with galleries and artists’ studios that have regularly changing art exhibitions, including Art Hub.
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Saatchi Gallery
Funded by the eponymous Charles, patron of such Brit Artists as Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin, the gallery offers some 6500 sq metres of space for temporary exhibitions.
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Saatchi Gallery
Funded by the eponymous Charles, patron of such Brit Artists as Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin, the gallery offers some 6500 sq metres of space for temporary exhibitions.
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White Cube Gallery
Jay Jopling, dealer to the stars of the Brit Art firmament, made his reputation in the 1990s by exhibiting then-unknown artists such as Damien Hirst, Antony Gormley and Tracey Emin. This Hoxton Square cube is aptly named and, while the gallery is now part of Britain’s ‘new establishment’, it’s always worth a visit just to have a look at the latest shows. There’s another White Cube in St James’s.
reviewed