The success of the Damien Hirst generation has fuelled enormous interest in contemporary art, leading to the creation of a plethora of new or revamped seaside art galleries – the Towner in Eastbourne, Turner Contemporary in Margate, the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill-on-Sea, and a host of galleries in Folkestone.
For those who prefer great Old Masters, the Impressionists or 20th century masterpieces, these are boom times too. Galleries such as the Ashmolean in Oxford, Pallant Housein Chichester, the Watts Gallerynear Guildford and others have all benefited from large lottery grants.
Stanley Spencer Gallery, Cookham, Berkshire.
Set in a Methodist chapel in a picturesque village on the Thames, this exquisite small gallery is a shrine to the life and works of the Christian painter Sir Stanley Spencer (1891-1954). He called Cookham “a village in Heaven”.
An official war artist in both World Wars, Spencer is best known for his great Biblical scenes set in Cookham using local backdrops and villagers as characters from the Gospels.
MK Gallery, Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire
A well-regarded, international contemporary gallery with a regularly changing exhibition programme. Recent past shows include Phil Collins and Cathy Wilkes, who went on to be shortlisted for the Turner Prize, and a big retrospective for eccentric Marcus Coates who showed a video about talking to animals.
The current show (until April 3), by Gerard Byrne, is about the myths surrounding the Loch Ness Monster.
Southampton City Art Gallery, Hampshire.
A great regional collection, with 3,500 works spanning six centuries of European and Chinese art. Highlights include 17th-century Dutch landscapes, French Impressionists, Burne-Jones’s Perseus series, a strong 20th-century British holding including major pieces by the Camden Town Group, and 20th-century British ceramics.
It has a strong contemporary exhibition policy with, for example, a big Warhol show running from March 27 until June 28.
Osborne House, Isle Of Wight
A former royal residence but also a museum and art gallery telling the story of Victoria and Albert’s striking (well shocking, really) early tastes in the decorative arts. They adorned Osborne with silks, chandeliers, bright carpets, nude statues and an erotic fresco. Albert would lie in his bath with a Bellini or Fra Angelica hanging close by.
Highlights include the Durbar Room encrusted with Mughal arabesques, a classical sculpture gallery, exhibits from the 1851 Great Exhibition, and many pictures.
www.english-heritage.org.uk/osborne
No 1 Smithery: The Gallery, The Historic Dockyard, Chatham, Kent
It is fitting, given that HMS Temeraire (made famous by JMW Turner) was built there, that one of the latest draws at Chatham’s wonderful 400-year-old former dockyard, is No 1 Smithery. No 1 Smithery has brilliant new galleries displaying world-class maritime treasures from two national museums and a state-of-the-art gallery housing a changing programme of temporary exhibitions.
The first, last summer, was a show of Stanley Spencer’s series Shipbuilding on the Clyde. Showing (until March 27) is Art in the Dockyard, featuring Kent artists including Stephen Turner and Marissa Mardon.
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, Oxfordshire
Two years ago, Elias Ashmole’s mixed collection of art and antiquities — part-British Museum, part-National Gallery — doubled in size thanks to a vast £61 million extension. The Ashmolean, Britain’s first museum, opened in 1683, is one of the great collections of Europe with classical works from Greece, Rome and Egypt but also renaissance masterpieces and drawings by Michelangelo, Raphael and Rembrandt.
Watts Gallery, Guildford, Surrey
Due to reopen in the first half of 2011, the Watts Gallery is likely to become a major attraction. Showing the work of the Victorian artist GF Watts, the gallery is in a glorious Grade II Arts and Crafts building given to the nation along with 1,000 of his paintings, drawings and sculptures by the artist at his death in 1904.
Brighton Museum And Art Gallery, East Sussex
Opened next to the Royal Pavilion in 1902, it houses one of the most eclectic, but most important, collections outside the national institutions and had a £10 million facelift in 2002. Holdings include Egyptian artefacts, half a million insects and big collections of decorative arts. A highlight this year (April 16-October 9) will be Radical Bloomsbury, a major exhibition by Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell.
• For more information and ideas about romantic breaks for two, see www.visitsoutheastengland.com/timeforus
