Guildhall Art Gallery

In 2016, the Guildhall Art Gallery continued to serve as one of London’s most significant civic art museums, housing the City of London Corporation’s collection of more than 4,000 works. Located beside the historic Guildhall and above the remains of London’s Roman amphitheatre, the gallery offered visitors a rich overview of British art, with particular strengths in Victorian painting, Pre-Raphaelite works, and depictions of London’s social and architectural history. The gallery’s permanent displays included masterpieces by artists such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, and John Singleton Copley, whose monumental Defeat of the Floating Batteries at Gibraltar dominates the main exhibition space. During 2016, the gallery presented several notable exhibitions that explored London’s past and present. Among them was Visscher Redrawn: 1616–2016, which paired Claes Jansz Visscher’s famous seventeenth-century panorama of London with Robin Reynolds’ contemporary reinterpretation, highlighting four centuries of urban transformation. Another major exhibition, Unseen City: Photos by Martin Parr, showcased the celebrated photographer’s behind-the-scenes view of the City of London, capturing both its ceremonial traditions and everyday life. Through these exhibitions, the Guildhall Art Gallery demonstrated its commitment to connecting historical collections with contemporary perspectives on the city’s evolving identity.