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TOP-20 Art Museums And Galleries Of London

18.11.2022

Let’s go to London, the art capital of Europe, where galleries and museums are literally everywhere! Every year it makes millions of tourists visit the capital of Great Britain again and again. There are the most iconic places that a true art lover must visit.



Buckingham Palace


Visiting London and not seeing the palace of the royal family is a real crime! Therefore, we advise you to start the city tour with Buckingham Palace. The state rooms are open to the public in August and September when the royal family is away. In total, the palace has 775 rooms, 19 are open to the public, which members of the royal family use for meetings and official ceremonies. In addition, The Queen’s Gallery is constantly open to the public in the palace, where temporary exhibitions and exhibitions of the royal collection rich in masterpieces of world art are held.



National Gallery


Mecca for art lovers of the old masters on Trafalgar Square, in terms of attendance is comparable to the Louvre, the Hermitage and the Metropolitan. Here you can see a magnificent collection of works of Western European painting from Giotto to Cezanne, including paintings by Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Brueghel the Elder, Vermeer. Exhibitions are held here accordingly - mostly blockbusters from the works of old masters, which include works from the royal collection.



National Portrait Gallery


As the name suggests, it contains portraits of prominent Britons, including the so-called Chandos portrait, which supposedly depicts William Shakespeare - the gallery's very first acquisition. A separate theme is the gallery of monarchs, starting with the portrait of Queen Elizabeth I of 1592, also known as the portrait from Ditchli, and ending with a canvas depicting Princes William and Harry in 2009. Exhibitions are held here of both classical and contemporary art, the main thing is that portraits are exhibited at them. The museum is compactly located with the National Gallery - you just need to turn the corner.



Courtauld Institute of Art


Not far from the National Gallery, in the Strand, is Somerset House with the Courtauld Institute of Art Gallery located there. In fact, this is an educational collection: according to the founders of the institute, students were supposed to study the history of art "on the spot" - but its quality and completeness claim to be of the highest museum level. The beginning was laid by the meeting of the industrialist Samuel Courtauld with the French Impressionists and grew in private collections throughout the 20th century. Now you can see art from the Renaissance to the twentieth century, including works by Brueghel the Elder, Cranach, Rubens, Botticelli, Tiepolo, Goya, Modigliani and Kandinsky.



Royal Academy of Arts


A stronghold of tradition in Piccadilly with a collection of British art and numerous exhibitions of both classics and contemporary. Every year, for almost 250 years, a "summer exhibition" has been held here, which is accompanied by a noisy party. The leadership of the Academy, as it were, refutes the myth that artists become popular after death, and honors living academics in the exposition - Ai Weiwei, Anish Kapoor, David Hockney, Marina Abramovich and many others.



Victoria & Albert Museum


One of the most popular museums in the world, located on the territory of the so-called Albertopolis - the cultural and educational quarter of the Victorian era in South Kensington. The institution has extensive collections of decorative and applied arts from all over the world - ceramics, furniture, glass, fabrics, as well as photographs, paintings and sculptures from different centuries. Together, they make it the largest design museum, which also hosts powerful exhibitions dedicated to fashion, music and subcultures, in particular fashion designers Alexander McQueen and Cristobal Balenciaga, musicians Pink Floyd and David Bowie.



Design Museum


In 2016, the Design Museum moved from a converted warehouse on the Thames to a spacious building near Kensington Gardens. The museum is dedicated to contemporary design in all its manifestations - from architecture to fashion, from small to industrial objects, to exhibit here is to become a classic in life. In addition to a representative permanent exhibition, exhibitions of various topics are held here - from dedicated to specific brands, such as Ferrari or SMEG, to research, for example, studying the change in color depending on the lighting and the surface on which it is applied.



Serpentine Galleries


The authoritative gallery, whose patron was Princess Diana, is located in the tea pavilion in Kensington Gardens and presents the art of the twentieth century. For 45 years, more than two thousand exhibitions of both emerging artists and stars of the level of Man Ray, Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons have been held here. For more than fifteen years, the temporary summer pavilions for the gallery have been built by outstanding contemporary architects, from Oscar Niemeyer and Jean Nouvel to Rem Koolhaas, Peter Zumthor and Zaha Hadid. The latter also designed another exhibition area for the gallery - located here Serpentine Sackler Gallery.



Saatchi Gallery


Advertiser, collector and art dealer Charles Saatchi reopened his vast concept art gallery in Chelsea in 2008 as the pioneer of the Young British Artists movement. Exhibitions specialize in young, unknown artists with potential or those who have rarely or never exhibited in the UK.



Newport Street Gallery


One of the most famous Young British Artists, Damien Hirst, opened an exhibition space in Vauxhall in 2015, which was converted from his studio and designed by Caruso St John. In addition to works of art from Hirst's own collection (part of which could be seen at the exhibition at the Multimedia Art Museum in Moscow), which includes works by Francis Bacon and Jeff Koons, there are personal and group exhibitions of authors close to Hirst in spirit or those who once had influence on him.



Wallace Collection


The basis of the Wallace collection is the private collection of the Marquesses of Hertford and Sir Richard Wallace, which they successively developed in Hertford for over a century, from 1760 to the 1880s. And they succeeded in embellishing their property in Marylebone with arms and armor, Louis XV furniture, exquisite objects and paintings by old masters - Titian, Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Murillo and Velasquez, as well as an extensive collection of French paintings with canvases by Boucher, Delacroix and Watteau. After Wallace's death, his widow donated a magnificent collection to the state on the condition that her husband's memory be immortalized by the organization of a museum, from which not a single item can be transferred even to temporary exhibitions and also cannot be accepted.



Sir John Soane's Museum


Former home of the architect Sir John Soane, who designed the building at 10 Downing Street and the Bank of England. The interiors of the building at Lincoln Inn Fields are decorated with paintings by Canaletto and Watteau, over 250 building models, a collection of architectural drawings, and the alabaster sarcophagus of Pharaoh Seti I. Yet the most valuable exhibit here is considered to be a series of eight canvases by William Hogarth "Mot's Career" ("Adventures rake"), which the architect's wife acquired at Christie's in 1802, and later Igor Stravinsky used this plot to write an opera.



Whitechapel Gallery


The Whitechapel Gallery in Tower Hamlets, East London, was founded in 1901 to educate the local population. Over the past time, the gallery has strengthened its position in showing exhibitions of modern and contemporary art, and here they even joke that the history of the Whitechapel Gallery is the history of the first: in 1939, Picasso's famous "Guernica" was exhibited at the institution during its first and only show in the UK, and in 1958 it hosted the first UK exhibition of the American Expressionist Jackson Pollock. Then there were David Hockney, Gilbert and George, Richard Long, Donald Judd and so on - it's easier to name who didn't exhibit here. At the same time, the Whitechapel Gallery does not forget about traditions and presents a rich educational program and a variety of public events.



The Zabludowicz Collection


Anita and Poju Zabludowicz began collecting contemporary art in the mid-1990s and, until they had their own space, collaborated with museums. The couple is not limited to a specific direction and gathers artists from all over the world with an emphasis on American and European. The collection of over 3,000 works by 500 authors is now on display in a former 19th-century Protestant chapel in north London. The list of highlights of the collection includes works by Sigmar Polke, Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst, Harun Mirza. It also hosts group and solo exhibitions by artists who are not part of the pool of any British gallery. In addition to the UK, The Zabludowicz Collection has offices in the US and Finland.



White Cube


One of the world's most successful and well-known commercial galleries, with a presence in Hong Kong, rose to prominence after hosting some of the first exhibitions by Young British Artists, including Tracey Emin. A 1970s building was refurbished for the White Cube in Bermondsey, and the gallery now houses one of the largest themed spaces in the world, over 5,000 sq. m. In addition to three exhibition halls, there are also rooms for private showings of works of art, an auditorium and a bookstore.