York Castle Museum

Welcome to York Art Gallery

York Art Gallery combines a distinguished history of displaying fine paintings and ceramics with a modern-day welcome to all through a busy calendar of exhibitions, events and outreach work.

Paintings are displayed in six areas over the two floors of the gallery and are divided into themes such as people and places.

They span more than 600 years and range from 14^th century Italian panels and 17^th century Dutch masterpieces to Victorian narrative paintings and 20^th century works by LS Lowry and David Hockney.

Highlights from the gallery’s outstanding collection of 20^th century ceramics are also on display.

Please note our first floor gallery of portraits, landscapes and narrative paintings, the Burton Gallery, is being refurbished and will be closed until January, 2011. If you are visiting solely to see a particular painting within this period, we recommend you contact us beforehand to check it is on display.

Click here for more information about our permanent displays and for more details about the Burton Gallery refurbishment.

The main ground floor gallery, which was refurbished in 2005, is used to house special exhibitions. These change every few months and can be anything from a touring exhibition from the National Portrait Gallery to a celebration of our own ceramics collection.

Another new area is The Studio, close to the main entrance, which is used for family activities, community work and education sessions.

The building which houses the gallery opened its doors to the public in 1879 for the second Yorkshire Fine Art and Industrial Exhibition, inspired by the Great Exhibition in London of 1851. In 1892 it became the City Art Gallery.

The gallery looks out over Exhibition Square, also created in 1879, and beyond to the city walls and York Minster. The centrepiece of the square is a statue of York artist William Etty which was erected in 1911.