St Ives' most illustrious gallery boasts a new monumental exhibition space that's been added to the museum's original, spiral-shaped core. Focusing on the coterie of experimental artists who congregated at St Ives after WWII and turned the little seaside town into a magnet for modern artists, the museum showcases the work of Barbara Hepworth, Terry Frost, Peter Lanyon and Patrick Heron in luminous, white-walled surroundings.
The original museum, a striking concrete-and-glass curl set back from the sands of Porthmeor Beach, was built in 2000. This part of the museum explores the St Ives story and its role in the development of modern art, with a revolving collection of works by both the well-known artists (Hepworth, Nicholson, Lanyon and so on) and less famous names such as Naum Gabo and Wilhelmina Barns-Graham.
The new exhibition space has added a huge, open, 500-sq-meter gallery to the original building, Filled with natural light and supported by hefty steel beams running across the space (capable of supporting elephants and a double-decker bus, apparently), it's designed to host an annual exhibition of work by one contemporary artist, to serve as a contextual counterpoint to the main gallery's collection. Whatever you make of the work on show, the gallery itself certainly makes a statement.
Check whether the cafe is open – it has cracking views over Porthmeor Beach.
