The New Art Spaces to Visit in London

This September, the art college that launched many of the YBA’s careers will open its new public art gallery, the Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art (Goldsmiths CCA). Designed by the Turner Prize-winning architecture collective Assemble, Goldsmiths CCA will be located in a redeveloped Grade II-listed building on the college’s campus. Boasting eight gallery spaces, the gallery launches with a solo show by Argentinian artist Mika Rottenberg.

Japan House have launched their London outpost in a renovated Art Deco building on High Street Kensington. With a gallery, theatre, library, restaurant and retail space, Japan House brings the best of Japanese culture and gastronomy together all under one roof. Their inaugural exhibition is devoted to the innovative Japanese architect, Sou Fujimoto, who has filled the lower gallery space with a number of architectural models that reveal his interest in connecting inhabited space with nature.

This summer the Wallace Collection reveals its £1.2 million exhibition space, to mark 200 years since the birth of its founder Sir Richard Wallace. The first show gives an introduction to Wallace’s philanthropic pursuits and how he built an impressive art collection that includes armour, rococo masterpieces like The Swing (1767) by Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Sevres porcelain and imperial cups from China. While the main galleries in Hertford House are exquisite examples of resplendent 18th-century interior design, the new space in the basement gives a refreshing contemporary take on a world-renowned collection.

50ft (16-metres) above Westminster Abbey’s floor, the medieval Triforium – which English poet and writer John Betjeman described as having the ‘best view in Europe’ – has opened for the first time to the public. Renovated as the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Galleries, here you can learn about the thousand-year history of Westminster Abbey through exquisite treasures from its collection which includes an illuminated 14th-century service book, Mary II’s Coronation Chair and The Westminster Retable, the oldest surviving altarpiece from Henry III’s Abbey.

Set within the Hackney Downs Studios, Public Gallery is East London’s newest art space. Focusing on fostering the careers of emerging artists, co-directors Alex Harrison and Harry Dougall have curated an exhibition programme of solo shows of young painters, including Mia Wilkinson, Anna Hymas and Alice Neave.

Back in May, the Royal Academy of Arts (RA) who are celebrating their 250th anniversary, unveiled their expansion into Burlington Gardens – the former Museum of Mankind. The redevelopment, which now links both sites, was led by the renowned architect Sir David Chipperfield CBE RA, giving the RA 70% more public space. A display of Tacita Dean’s epic photographic and film work inaugurates the new Gabrielle Jungels-Winkler Galleries, while the new Collections Gallery enables important pieces from the RA’s collection to go on show, including Michelangelo’s Taddei Tondo (around 1504-05) and Giampietrino’s The Last Supper (around 1520). In addition to the expanded gallery spaces, there is a 250-seat lecture theatre and a new all-day restaurant that takes over the grand Senate Room.