Art & Museums in Britain
There are 2,500 museums and galleries in Britain, and over 300 in London alone. And no, they're not dark rooms full of dusty old artefacts - our museums have fascinating collections and exciting exhibits. And lots of them are free! So what are you waiting for?
V&A Museum
The V&A Museum in London is the world's greatest museum of art and design. The collections span 5,000 years of art from ancient times to the present day, in virtually every medium, from Europe, North America, Asia and North Africa. The V&A also holds some great exhibitions, like The Golden Age of Couture, Kylie - The Exhibition, China Design Now and The Story of The Supremes. Don't miss the Friday Evening Talks, where you can see big names from the world of design, art and culture talk about what they do best.
Tate Modern
The Tate Modern is Britain's national museum of modern art. Situated on the River Thames in London, the Tate Modern is housed in a former power station. There are 5 levels in the Tate: the permanent Tate Collection is on levels 3 and 5, level 4 houses large temporary exhibitions, and the exhibition space on level 2 holds work by contemporary artists. The Turbine Hall stretches from the ground floor to level 5, and displays specially-commissioned work like Carsten Höller's 'Test Site', which featured a giant slide, and Doris Salcedo's 'Shibboleth' - a controversial piece consisting of a large crack in the Turbine Hall floor.
Banksy
Banksy has left his mark on streets, buildings and bridges all over Britain and has become one of the most popular contemporary artists around. But his identity remains hidden. Banksy has blurred the boundaries between graffiti and art with his distinctive satirical and thought-provoking stencils and drawings: monkeys with weapons of mass destruction, little girls cuddling up to missiles, Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta in Pulp Fiction holding bananas instead of guns… the list is endless. Although Banksy's work sells for thousands of pounds, you can walk around almost any city in Britain and see examples of his work for free -
Bristol,
Liverpool,
Birmingham and
Manchester to name a few.
Damien Hirst
Damien has been at the forefront of the British art scene since the 1990s. Death is a central theme in Hirst's work - he became famous for a series in which dead animals (including a shark, a sheep and a cow) were preserved in formaldehyde. He was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1992, and won the award when he was nominated again in 1995 with Some Went Mad, Some Ran Away, an exhibition he curated featuring many of his works.