77–82 Whitechapel High Street, E1 7QX

Phone:

020-7522 7888

Website:

www.whitechapel.org

Opening times:

Tues–Sun 11:00–18:00, also Thur 11:00–21:00

How to get there:

Tube: Aldgate East

Entry fee:

Free

Additional information:

Café and shop

Founded in 1901, the Whitechapel is a leading venue for modern and contemporary art, with a strong programme of temporary exhibitions. Founded in 1901, the gallery has its origins in the exhibitions of paintings organised by Canon Samuel A. Barnett (1844–1913) and his wife Henrietta (1851–1936) in St Jude’s National Schools in Whitechapel from 1881. Barnett shared the widespread Victorian belief in the civilising power of culture; the exhibitions were intended as a moral education for the citizens of a deprived East End area, as well as to ‘lessen the dead ugliness of their lives’. The Whitechapel’s distinguished Arts and Crafts building, with its arched entrance, was designed in 1897 by Charles Harrison Townsend. The narrow site, with exhibition space on two levels, was internally reorganised in 1982 and there is a current plan to extend into the adjacent old public library building.

On its foundation the Whitechapel staged contemporary British art exhibitions (G.F. Watts, the Pre-Raphaelites) as well as Old Master and international shows. From the mid-50s it became an increasingly important venue for avant-garde art, and today the programme’s emphasis is very much on modern and contemporary British and international works, by emerging artists as well as artists who live and work in the East End.