Museum & Art Swindon, formerly Swindon Museum and Art Gallery, is a museum and gallery in

Swindon Swindon () is a town in Wiltshire, England. At the time of the 2021 Census the population of the built-up area was 183,638, making it the largest settlement in the county. Located at the northeastern edge of the South West England region, Swi ...

, England. It is run by

Swindon Borough Council Swindon Borough Council is the local authority of the Borough of Swindon in the ceremonial county of Wiltshire, England. It was founded in 1974 as Thamesdown Borough Council, and was a lower-tier district council until 1997. In 1997 it was re ...

and since 2024 has been housed within the council's offices at Euclid Street,

History

The Swindon Art Gallery collection was established in 1944 by a local benefactor, H. J. P. Bomford, through a significant donation of artworks. Until June 2021 it was displayed in

Apsley House Apsley House is the London townhouse of the Dukes of Wellington. It stands alone at Hyde Park Corner, on the south-east corner of Hyde Park, facing towards the large traffic roundabout in the centre of which stands the Wellington Arch. It ...

, a 19th-century former house on the corner of Bath Road and Victoria Road in Swindon's Old Town, but had to leave when Swindon Borough Council decided in the summer of 2021 that the building was no longer suitable and required major repairs; it had been closed to the public since March 2020 in response to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

. The collection was placed in storage, and the council stated their commitment to the long term future of the institution. The facility reopened in July 2024 under a new name, Museum & Art Swindon, after the council spent £520,000 converting the first floor of its Civic Offices building at Euclid Street. The building, completed in 1939, is described by Historic England as "a striking and well-realised Moderne design".

Collection

The collection focuses on major artists and movements of 20th and 21st century British art, with several works presented by the

Art Fund Art Fund (formerly the National Art Collections Fund) is an independent membership-based British charity, which raises funds to aid the acquisition of artworks for the nation. It gives grants and acts as a channel for many gifts and bequests, as ...

and the

Contemporary Art Society The Contemporary Art Society (CAS) is an independent charity that champions the collecting of outstanding contemporary art and craft for UK museum collections. Since its founding in 1910 the organisation has donated over 10,000 works to museum ...

. Artists in the collection include Simon Carter,

Amanda Ansell Amanda Ansell (born 1976) is an English artist. She studied Fine Art at Norwich University of the Arts between 1995 and 1998 and then at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London from 1998 to 2000. After living in London for seve ...

Ben Nicholson Benjamin Lauder Nicholson, OM (10 April 1894 – 6 February 1982) was an English painter of abstract compositions (sometimes in low relief), landscapes, and still-life. He was one of the leading promoters of abstract art in England. Backg ...

Henry Moore Henry Spencer Moore (30 July 1898 – 31 August 1986) was an English artist. He is best known for his semi-abstract art, abstract monumental Bronze sculpture, bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art. Moore ...

Lucian Freud Lucian Michael Freud (; 8 December 1922 – 20 July 2011) was a British painter and draughtsman, specialising in figurative art, and is known as one of the foremost 20th-century English portraitists. His early career as a painter was inf ...

Graham Sutherland Graham Vivian Sutherland (24 August 1903 – 17 February 1980) was a prolific English artist. Notable for his paintings of abstract landscapes and for his portraits of public figures, Sutherland also worked in other media, including printmakin ...

, L S Lowry, Paul Nash,

Steven Pippin Steven Pippin (born 1960 at Redhill, Surrey) is an English photographer and installation artist. Pippin works with converted or improvised photographic equipment and kinetic sculptures which are often based on physical models and are metaphors fo ...

Terry Frost Sir Terence Ernest Manitou Frost RA (13 October 1915 – 1 September 2003) was a British abstract artist, who worked in Newlyn, Cornwall. Frost was renowned for his use of the Cornish light, colour and shape to start a new art movement in ...

Roger Hilton Roger Hilton CBE (1911–1975) was a pioneer of abstract art in post-Second World War Britain. Often associated with the 'middle generation' of St Ives painters – Terry Frost, Patrick Heron, Peter Lanyon & Bryan Wynter – he spent mu ...

Howard Hodgkin Sir Gordon Howard Eliot Hodgkin (6 August 1932 – 9 March 2017) was a British painter and printmaker. His work is most often associated with abstraction. Early life Gordon Howard Eliot Hodgkin was born on 6 August 1932 in Hammersmith, Londo ...

John Hoyland John Hoyland RA (12 October 1934 – 31 July 2011) was a London-based British artist. He was one of the country's leading abstract painters. Early life John Hoyland was born on 12 October 1934, in Sheffield, Yorkshire, to a working-class fami ...

, Richard Hamilton,

Gwen John Gwendolen ''Gwen'' Mary John (22 June 1876 – 18 September 1939) was a Welsh people, Welsh artist who worked in France for most of her career. Her paintings, mainly portraits of anonymous female sitters, are rendered in a range of closely relat ...

Augustus John Augustus Edwin John (4 January 1878 – 31 October 1961) was a Welsh painter, draughtsman, and etcher. For a time he was considered the most important artist at work in Britain: Virginia Woolf remarked that by 1908 the era of John Singer Sarg ...

Maggi Hambling Margaret J. Hambling (born 23 October 1945) is a British artist. Though principally a painter, her best-known public works are the sculptures '' A Conversation with Oscar Wilde'' and '' A Sculpture for Mary Wollstonecraft'' in London, and the ...

John Bellany John Bellany (18 June 1942 – 28 August 2013) was a Scottish painter. Early life Bellany was born in Port Seton. His father and grandfather were fishermen in Port Seton and Eyemouth near Edinburgh. During the early 1960s, he studied at ...

Tony Bevan Tony Bevan (born 1951) is a British painter, known for his psychologically charged images of people at the edge of respectable society. Biography Bevan was born in Bradford, Yorkshire. He studied at Bradford School of Art from 1968 to 1971, fol ...

Ivon Hitchens Ivon Hitchens (born London, 3 March 1893 – 29 August 1979) was an English painter who started exhibiting during the 1920s. He became part of the 'London Group' of artists and exhibited with them during the 1930s. His house was bombed in 1940 d ...

, John Piper,

Christopher le Brun Sir Christopher Mark Le Brun (born 1951) is a British artist, known primarily as a painter. President of the Royal Academy of Arts from 2011 to December 2019, Le Brun was knighted in the 2021 New Year Honours "for services to the arts". Bi ...

, Dennis Creffield,

Lisa Milroy Lisa Milroy (born 16 January 1959 in Vancouver, British Columbia) is an Anglo-Canadian artist known for her still life paintings of everyday objects. In the 1980s, Milroy’s paintings featured ordinary objects depicted against an off-white back ...

, Julie Umerle, David Leach,

Lucie Rie Dame Lucie Rie, (16 March 1902 – 1 April 1995) () was an Austrian-born, independent, British studio potter. She is known for her extensive technical knowledge, her meticulously detailed experimentation with glazes and with firing and her unu ...

Hans Coper Hans Coper (8 April 1920 – 16 June 1981) was an influential German-born British studio potter. His work is often coupled with that of Lucie Rie due to their close association, even though their best known work differs dramatically, wit ...

Gillian Ayres Gillian Ayres (3 February 1930 – 11 April 2018) was an English painter. She is best known for abstract painting and printmaking using vibrant colours, which earned her a Turner Prize nomination. Early life and education Gillian Ayres was bo ...

, Linda Ingham,

Robert Priseman Robert Priseman (born in Spondon, Derbyshire in 1965) is a British artist, collector, writer, curator and publisher who lives and works in Essex, England. Over 200 works of art by Priseman are held in art museum collections around the world in ...

, Sheila Fell,

Eileen Cooper Eileen Cooper (born 10 June 1953) is a British artist, known primarily as a painter and printmaker. Early life Cooper was born in Glossop, Derbyshire and attended Ashton-under-Lyne College of Further Education. She went on to study at Goldsm ...

Grayson Perry Sir Grayson Perry (born 24 March 1960) is an English artist. He is known for his ceramic vases, tapestries, and cross-dressing, as well as his observations of the contemporary arts scene, and for dissecting British "prejudices, fashions and foib ...

and William Turnbull. The media include paintings, photography and studio pottery. At its former Apsley House venue, the museum had on display local

archaeology Archaeology or archeology is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of Artifact (archaeology), artifacts, architecture, biofact (archaeology), biofacts or ecofacts, ...

geology Geology (). is a branch of natural science concerned with the Earth and other astronomical objects, the rocks of which they are composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology significantly overlaps all other Earth ...

, and

history History is the systematic study of the past, focusing primarily on the Human history, human past. As an academic discipline, it analyses and interprets evidence to construct narratives about what happened and explain why it happened. Some t ...

. Displays presented Swindon's geological

Jurassic The Jurassic ( ) is a Geological period, geologic period and System (stratigraphy), stratigraphic system that spanned from the end of the Triassic Period million years ago (Mya) to the beginning of the Cretaceous Period, approximately 143.1 Mya. ...

history, its association with the

Roman Empire The Roman Empire ruled the Mediterranean and much of Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. The Roman people, Romans conquered most of this during the Roman Republic, Republic, and it was ruled by emperors following Octavian's assumption of ...

, and the town's

social history Social history, often called history from below, is a field of history that looks at the lived experience of the past. Historians who write social history are called social historians. Social history came to prominence in the 1960s, spreading f ...

Events

Swindon Museum and Art Gallery was one of the venues for the annual

Swindon Festival of Literature Swindon Festival of Literature is an annual literature festival held in Swindon, Wiltshire, England, which was founded in 1994 by Matt Holland of Lower Shaw Farm. It takes place in early May. History The festival was founded in 1994 by Matt Holl ...

References

External links

* 1944 establishments in England Art museums and galleries established in 1944 Buildings and structures in Swindon Swindon Museum Swindon Museum Modern art museums in the United Kingdom {{UK-art-display-stub

History

Collection

Events

References

Further reading

External links