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Britain has no shortage of art galleries, but which ones deserved a spot on our latest ‘best of’ list? Time Out recently published a guide to our favourite art galleries in the UK for 2026, and the list is a pretty varied bunch. Top was The Lowry in Salford, home to the world’s biggest public collection of LS Lowry works, while the rest of the list featured the likes of Hastings Contemporary, Tate St Ives, and Jupiter Artland.
Coming in at number two was Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge. Yes, this is an art gallery – but it’s also an opportunity to poke around someone’s very lovely old house. It was once the home of curator and collector Jim Ede and his wife Helen, who lived there from 1957 to 1973 and donated the home and collection to the University of Cambridge.
Ede had previously worked as a curator at the Tate, where he became friends with artists including Ben Nicholson and David Jones. Over the years he built up a collection of works by Nicholson, Alfred Wallis, Christopher Wood and Joan Miró, alongside sculptures by Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Constantin Brâncuși, Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth. When he created Kettle’s Yard, he wanted it to be somewhere people could actually live with art, rather than experience it in the more formal atmosphere of a museum.
At Kettle’s Yard paintings and arty objects sit alongside rugs, bookcases and furniture, with the house itself forming part of the experience. It was nominated for the list by Time Out’s news and features editor Ed Cunningham, who called it ‘quite possibly the UK’s most exquisite house’, adding that ‘on each visit you always find new things to fixate upon’.
But Kettle’s Yard isn’t just about the treasures in its residence. It also has a display space with temporary exhibitions, which in recent years has featured shows from Ai Weiwei, Howardena Pindell, Lucie Rie and Lubaina Himid, alongside displays exploring everything from Palestinian embroidery to art, crisis and survival.
And there’s a particularly good reason to visit Kettle’s Yard right now. Sunil Gupta: Life with a Camera, 1970–Now runs until January 31 2027, bringing together more than 130 photographs from the pioneering photographer’s five-decade career. The free exhibition spans Gupta’s life between Delhi, Montreal, New York and London, including his photographs of queer communities and his work around LGBTQ+ rights in India and the UK.
There are also guided tours of the house, which explore the Edes’ story and the artworks and objects they collected. Find out more here.
🎨 The best art galleries in the UK.
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