The Whitechapel Gallery

Know London

The Whitechapel Gallery was founded in 1901, as one of the Capital’s first publically funded galleries for temporary exhibitions; bringing great art to the east of London. Internationally acclaimed for its exhibitions of modern and contemporary art and its pioneering education and public events programmes, the Gallery has premiered international artists such as Pablo Picasso, Frida Kahlo, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko, and provided a showcase for Britain’s most significant artists such as Gilbert & George and Lucian Freud.

It exhibits the work of contemporary artists, as well as organising retrospective exhibitions and shows that are of interest to the local community.

The Gallery exhibited Pablo Picasso’s ‘Guernica’ in 1938 as part of a touring exhibition organised by Roland Penrose to protest the Spanish Civil War. For the history of post-war British art, the most important exhibition to have been held at the Whitechapel Gallery was This is Tomorrow in 1956. Initiated by members of the Independent Group, the exhibition brought Pop Art to the general public as well as introducing some of the artists, concepts, designers and photographers that would define the Swinging Sixties.

In the later 1960s and through the 1970s, the critical importance of the Whitechapel Gallery was displaced by newer venues such as the Hayward Gallery, but in the 1980s the Gallery enjoyed a resurgence under the Directorship of Nicholas Serota. The Whitechapel Gallery had a major refurbishment in 1986 and has recently completed (April 2009) a two year programme of work to incorporate the former Passmore Edwards Library building next door, vacated when Whitechapel Idea Store opened, which has doubled the physical size of the Gallery and nearly tripled available exhibition space, and which will now allow the Whitechapel Gallery to remain open to the public year round.

The Gallery plays a unique role in the capital’s cultural landscape and is pivotal to the continued growth of East London as the world’s most vibrant contemporary art quarter.

The Grade II* Whitechapel Gallery was designed by architect Charles Harrison Townsend. This purpose built gallery is an outstanding example of the Arts and Crafts movement and its aspirations of being accessible, spiritually uplifting and transformative. This development also builds on the 1980s expansion by Colquhoun and Miller under the directorship of Sir Nicolas Serota and inaugurated by the Queen Mother.