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The Courtauld Gallery is about to reopen, and it looks amazing

A first look at the the refurb of one of London’s best art collections

Eddy Frankel
Written by
Eddy Frankel
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The Courtauld Gallery is one of London’s most special museums, with a genuinely jaw-dropping collection of art from antiquity through to impressionism and up to modernism. But it has been closed for the past three years for refurbishment, denying Londoners one of our best art spaces. But next week, it reopens, and we’ve been lucky enough to have a first look at what’s in store. 

The second floor will now be home to art from the renaissance through to the eighteenth century, but the main attraction is upstairs where you’ll find works by Degas, Monet, Cézanne and Manet in gorgeously redesigned exhibition rooms. This is one of the world’s best impressionist art collections, and it’s never looked better. 

13. The Blavatnik Fine Rooms at The Courtauld Gallery Photo © David Levene
13. The Blavatnik Fine Rooms at The Courtauld Gallery Photo © David LeveneThe Courtauld Gallery. Photograph by David Levene. 5/11/21

There are also new rooms dedicated to the Bloomsbury Group and twentieth century art movements. The Courtauld’s got Kandinskys and Gauguins on the go, so you know there’s some good stuff to see. 

That’s the permanent collection, but the gallery’s also opening with three temporary displays focused on drawings by big names like Georg Baselitz and Joseph Beuys and art from Kurdistan in the 1940s. 

1. Cecily Brown, Unmoored from her reflection, 2021. Oil on linen, 149 x 539 cm © Cecily Brown. Courtesy the artist, Thomas Dane Gallery. Photo © David Levene.
1. Cecily Brown, Unmoored from her reflection, 2021. Oil on linen, 149 x 539 cm © Cecily Brown. Courtesy the artist, Thomas Dane Gallery. Photo © David Levene.

The gallery has been redesigned by Stirling Prize-winning architects Witherford Watson Mann and it opens on Friday November 19, with tickets costing £9 on weekdays and £11 on weekends. But if you want to get excited for the future, then hold on to your ears because the Courtauld is opening a whole exhibition dedicated to Van Gogh’s self-portraits in February 2022. I SAID, THERE’S A VAN GOGH SELF-PORTRAIT EXHIBITION OPENING IN FEBRUARY.

The Courtauld Gallery reopens on Fri Nov 19, and 'Van Gogh Self Portraits' opens on Feb 3 2022. All details here.

Can’t wait? Here are London’s top ten exhibitions.

Want more? Here are London’s best free art exhibitions.

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