The Hayward Gallery is an art gallery within the Southbank Centre in central London, England and part of an area of major arts venues on the South Bank of the

River Thames The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the second-longest in the United Kingdom, after the R ...

. It is sited adjacent to the other Southbank Centre buildings (the Royal Festival Hall and the Queen Elizabeth Hall/

Purcell Room The Purcell Room is a concert and performance venue which forms part of the Southbank Centre, one of central London's leading cultural complexes. It is named after the 17th century English composer Henry Purcell and has 370 seats. The Purcell Roo ...

) and also the National Theatre and

BFI Southbank BFI Southbank (from 1951 to 2007, known as the National Film Theatre) is the leading repertory cinema in the UK, specialising in seasons of classic, independent and non-English language films. It is operated by the British Film Institute. His ...

repertory cinema. Following a rebranding of the South Bank Centre to Southbank Centre in early 2007, the Hayward Gallery was known as the Hayward until early 2011.

Description

The Hayward Gallery was built by

Higgs and Hill Higgs and Hill was a major British construction company responsible for construction of many well-known buildings in London. History The company was established in 1874 by the merger of the firm of Thomas Hill (managed by Rowland and Joseph Hill ...

and opened on 9 July 1968. Its massing and extensive use of exposed concrete construction are features typical of

Brutalist architecture Brutalist architecture is an architectural style that emerged during the 1950s in the United Kingdom, among the reconstruction projects of the post-war era. Brutalist buildings are characterised by minimalist constructions that showcase the ba ...

. The initial concept was designed, with the Queen Elizabeth Hall and Purcell Room, as an addition to the Southbank Centre arts complex by team leader Norman Engleback, assisted by John Attenborough, Ron Herron and Warren Chalk, two members of the later founded group

Archigram Archigram was an avant-garde architectural group formed in the 1960s ⁠that was neofuturistic, anti-heroic and pro-consumerist, drawing inspiration from technology in order to create a new reality that was solely expressed through hypothetical ...

, of the Department of Architecture and Civic Design of the Greater London Council. Warren Chalk then developed the site plan and connective first floor walkways, while Ron Herron worked on the acoustics for the Queen Elizabeth Hall. Alan Waterhouse, then Dennis Crompton, worked on the designs for the Hayward. The building is named after Sir

Isaac Hayward Sir Isaac James Hayward (17 November 1884 – 3 January 1976) was a British politician who was the longest-serving leader of the London County Council. He served from 1947 until it was abolished on the expansion of London (to form Greater Lond ...

, a former leader of the

London County Council London County Council (LCC) was the principal local government body for the County of London throughout its existence from 1889 to 1965, and the first London-wide general municipal authority to be directly elected. It covered the area today kno ...

, the GLC's predecessor. Joanna Drew was the founding director;

Ralph Rugoff Ralph Rugoff (born 12 January 1957) is an American-born curator, the director of London's Hayward Gallery since 2006, and the curator of the Venice Biennale in 2019. Rugoff was born in New York City, the son of a film distributor father and a psy ...

has been director since 2006.

Exhibitions

The Hayward does not house a permanent collection. Instead, it hosts three or four major temporary exhibitions of modern or contemporary artworks each year. From 1968 to 1986, the gallery was managed by the Arts Council of Great Britain, but management of the gallery then passed to Southbank Centre. The gallery is also the base of Arts Council England's

National Touring Exhibitions National Touring Exhibitions is a programme managed and funded by Arts Council England that aims to provide access to high-quality contemporary and historical travelling exhibitions throughout the UK. The programme organises 2-3 major art exhibiti ...

programme, as it was, until 2002, of the Arts Council Collection. Unlike British galleries with permanent collections who receive local or central government funding, but in common with other temporary exhibitions at the London public galleries, the Hayward charges admission fees. The Hayward's exhibition policy embraces visual art from all periods: past shows having included the works of

Leonardo da Vinci Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 14522 May 1519) was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, Drawing, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially res ...

to Edvard Munch and beyond. The programme, however, has tended to concentrate on surveys of

contemporary art Contemporary art is the art of today, produced in the second half of the 20th century or in the 21st century. Contemporary artists work in a globally influenced, culturally diverse, and technologically advancing world. Their art is a dynamic co ...

which complement the spaces and powerful concrete structure of the building, such as those of works by

Dan Flavin Dan Flavin (April 1, 1933 – November 29, 1996) was an American Minimalism, minimalist artist famous for creating sculpture, sculptural objects and installations from commercially available Fluorescent lamp, fluorescent light fixtures. Earl ...

and Antony Gormley. It has hosted two surveys of works from the

Arts Council Collection The arts are a very wide range of human practices of creative expression, storytelling and cultural participation. They encompass multiple diverse and plural modes of thinking, doing and being, in an extremely broad range of media. Both hi ...

: ''British Art 1940–1980'' and ''How to Improve the World: 60 Years of British Art''.

Architecture

Yellow Staircase to QE Hall, Purcell Room and the Hayward

The design brief was for five gallery spaces, two levels of indoor galleries and three outdoor sculpture courts (the massive concrete trays at the upper level) in order to house the Arts Council collection. The intended outdoor display of sculpture against the background of the London skyline appears to have been impractical and the sculpture courts have been little used and usually closed to the public until the ''Blind Light'' exhibition of works by Antony Gormley in 2007. The two levels of the gallery open to the public are linked by a pair of cast concrete staircases. These staircases, and lavatories at an intermediate level, are accommodated in a concrete box in between the eastern and western parts of the indoor galleries. One of these staircases also runs down to street level with access (now emergency only) to Belvedere Road; the other extends down into the private entrance foyer, at lower level, on the north side of the building. This almost hidden private entrance is located below the foyer and external walkway on the north facade, above the car park and near the overhanging Purcell Room auditorium. Screens formerly advertised the National Film Theatre (the

from 2007) and

Museum of the Moving Image The Museum of the Moving Image is a media museum located in a former building of the historic Astoria Studios (now Kaufman Astoria Studios), in the Astoria neighborhood in Queens, New York City. The museum originally opened in 1988 as the Amer ...

enclosed the car park by the central access road. They were removed in 2008 giving a more open feel to the ground level area at the western end. The building originally had a very small main foyer area with cast aluminium doors similar to those of the Queen Elizabeth Hall. In 2003, the foyer of the building was remodelled with a larger glass-fronted foyer, designed by the Haworth Tompkins architectural practice, and including a new oval shaped glass pavilion designed by

Dan Graham Daniel Graham (March 31, 1942 – February 19, 2022) was an American visual artist, writer, and curator in the writer-artist tradition. In addition to his visual works, he published a large array of critical and speculative writing that spanned ...

above a new cafe in the projecting former office space at the east end. A shop had been added earlier inside the north-west end of the lower gallery. The two upper galleries can use heavily filtered natural light from the glass pyramids on their flat roofs. Three concrete towers run vertically through the middle of the structure and contain the passenger lift, service lift and service duct. Between 1972 and 2008 a kinetic light

sculpture Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable ...

, which responds to wind force, stood on the roof of the passenger lift tower. This famous London landmark was designed and built by Philip Vaughan and Roger Dainton as a way to attract visitors to the gallery. It was removed in order for renovation to take place which involved replacing the original neon lighting with LEDs, but subsequently it was decided not to reinstall it. The roof terrace at the south end and linking bridge to the Queen Elizabeth Hall foyer building is closed to the public, which makes impossible some of the more interesting pedestrian circulation opportunities of the original design, although these have been opened for the Summer of Fun festival in 2011. The walkway above Belvedere Road with access from

Waterloo Bridge Waterloo Bridge () is a road and foot traffic bridge crossing the River Thames in London, between Blackfriars Bridge and Hungerford Bridge and Golden Jubilee Bridges. Its name commemorates the victory of the British, Dutch and Prussians at t ...

widens to the west, following the line of Belvedere Road and accommodating the stairs to the external terrace, but following a different line from the upper gallery walls. The angled plan shape of the concrete sculpture court in the south corner reflects the change in angle of the site between Waterloo Bridge and Festival Square. In this way, despite its seemingly uncompromising form, the building responds to its site. The south-west corner of the building at street level is occupied by an electrical switch room. A car park occupies most of the lower ground level. A plant room occupies the lower level at the east end, above the car park, with a great concrete exhaust stack by Waterloo Bridge. The high-level walkway system which linked the Hayward to the

Hungerford Bridge The Hungerford Bridge crosses the River Thames in London, and lies between Waterloo Bridge and Westminster Bridge. Owned by Network Rail Infrastructure Ltd (who use its official name of Charing Cross Bridge) it is a steel truss railway bridge ...

area was partly removed in spring 1999, leaving a curious truncated end on Festival Square, and poorer access from Festival Square. This is exacerbated by the positioning of the car park and loading bay entrances, a legacy of the original 1960's design ideas about vertical separation of pedestrian and vehicle traffic. Among the tricks of the building is the different lines of the walls at ground level and walkway level on this facade, which reconcile the differing axes of the Hayward and the Royal Festival Hall. In 2011, the Hayward Gallery was added to the protected list by the

World Monuments Fund World Monuments Fund (WMF) is a private, international, non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of historic architecture and cultural heritage sites around the world through fieldwork, advocacy, grantmaking, education, and trainin ...

. The gallery was temporarily closed in September 2015, for two years of renovations and re-opened in early 2018.

Recent developments

Staircase on the Southern Side of the Hayward Gallery

Southbank Centre and Arts Council considered the future of the Hayward building, together with the Queen Elizabeth Hall and

which stand between the Hayward and the River Thames over several years. A proposed scheme selected from an architectural competition, designed by Richard Rogers, in the early 1990s would have involved covering all three buildings in a great wave-shaped glass roof, which would have linked the Royal Festival Hall to Waterloo Bridge. This did not proceed due to its reliance on a high level of lottery funding, likely high cost, and the opposition of the

Twentieth Century Society The Twentieth Century Society (C20) is a British charity which campaigns for the preservation of architectural heritage from 1914 onwards. The society's interests embrace buildings and artefacts that characterise 20th-century Britain. It is for ...

who saw it as damaging to the setting of the individual buildings underneath the canopy. Refurbushment work was carried out in 2015-18 under plans developed by

Feilden Clegg Bradley Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios (also known as FCBStudios) is a British architectural design firm, established in 1978, with offices in Bath, London, Manchester, Belfast and Edinburgh. The firm is known for its pioneering work in sustainable des ...

and included in this work were structural repairs such as the renewal of the 60 odd steel and glass pyramids which grace the roof of the gallery and removal of a false ceiling which obstructed natural light reaching the upper galleries.

References

External links

Hayward Gallery at Google Cultural Institute

Hayward Gallery link on Southbank Centre website

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