York Art Gallery
York Art Gallery and statue of William Etty
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| Established | 1882 |
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| Location | York, United Kingdom |
| Coordinates | 53°57′46″N 1°05′11″W / 53.962873°N 1.086278°WCoordinates: 53°57′46″N 1°05′11″W / 53.962873°N 1.086278°W |
| Type | Art museum |
| Key holdings | British Studio Pottery, Views of York, William Etty |
| Collections | Western European paintings, British paintings, prints, watercolours, drawings, ceramics |
| Curator | Laura Turner |
| Owner | York Museums Trust |
| Website | yorkartgallery |
York Art Gallery in York, England is a public art gallery with a collection of paintings from 14th-century to contemporary, prints, watercolours, drawings, and ceramics. It closed for major redevelopment in 2013, reopening in summer of 2015. It is managed by York Museums Trust.
The gallery was created to provide a permanent building as the core space for the second Yorkshire Fine Art and Industrial Exhibition of 1879, the first in 1866 occupied a temporary chalet in the grounds of Bootham Asylum. Following the 1879 exhibition the renamed Yorkshire Fine Art and Industrial Institution aimed to create a permanent art exhibition. It was given a major boost by the bequest of York collector John Burton (1799–1882) of more than one hundred 19th-century paintings, supplemented by gifts and in the early years two major temporary loan collections. In 1888 the north galleries were leased to York School of Art, which moved there in 1890 from Minster Yard.
York City Council purchased the buildings and collection in 1892. Temporary summer exhibitions ceased in 1903 but a major exhibition of the work of York artist William Etty was held in 1911 when his statue by local sculptor George Walker Milburn was erected outside. The period up to the commencement of the Second World War was one of modest growth, the major event being purchase of the Dr W A Evelyn collection of prints, drawings and watercolours of York in 1931. The building was requisitioned for military purposes at the outbreak of the Second World War and closed, suffering bomb damage in an air raid on 29 April 1942.
The gallery reopened in 1948 with a small temporary exhibition before a major restoration in 1951–52 after which began a major revival of fortune under the direction of Hans Hess. He made important acquisitions with the assistance of the York Art Collection Society founded in 1948 (later Friends of York Art Gallery) and the National Art Collections Fund, and then in 1955 the donation of FD Lycett Green's collection of more than one hundred continental Old Master paintings. As a result of the systematic build up under Hess and his successors, the gallery has a British collection especially of late-19th-century and early-20th-century works with some French works representative of influential styles.
In 1963 the gallery was given Eric Milner-White's collection of studio pottery. It was supplemented by other major donations and loans in the 1990s and 2000s, most notably those of WA Ismay and Henry Rothschild (1913–2009).
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