Pallant House Gallery – Sussex

 

Pallant House Gallery - the home of Modern Art in the South.
With an exciting line-up of temporary exhibitions, an important permanent collection, and a packed programme of workshops, talks, tours and live performances.

 

Pallant House Gallery boasts one of the best collections of Modern British art in the UK. donated over the past thirty years, the collections tell the story of a number of individuals, all passionate collectors of art who generously donated their lifetimes’ labours to the Gallery for the benefit of the public.

 

The History

 

Walter Hussey, the Dean of Chichester Cathedral, left his personal collection to the city in 1977 with the condition that the collection be shown in Pallant House, a Grade 1 listed Queen Anne town house dating from 1712. Since 1919, the house had been used as Council offices and from 1979 a restoration programme began and preparations were made for it to open in 1982 as a unique combination of historic house and modern art gallery.

 

In 1985 an independent trust, consisting of the Friends and representatives of the Council, was formed to manage the Gallery. Since then the collections and the Gallery’s activities have expanded to the extent that it was decided a new building was needed in order for it to survive. The Gallery reopened Summer 2006 with a new wing and vastly improved facilities.

 

The Building

 

Pallant House Gallery is a remarkable hybrid: one of the country’s finest examples of domestic town architecture in the Queen Anne townhouse which dates from 1712, adjoined by an award winning contemporary wing, designed by Long & Kentish architects in association with Colin St John Wilson and opened to the public together as Pallant House Gallery in 2006.

 

The original Pallant House was the first of its style in Chichester and was regarded as very modern in its day, finished inside and out with very fine craftsmanship. Externally, Pallant House is, to modern eyes, elegant, restrained and the epitome of Englishness. But in its time it was the height of modernism. Its style, its materials and its size would have been very new to Chichester in the early eighteenth century. Its Baroque features must have looked positively outlandish to the inhabitants of Chichester at the end of Queen Anne’s reign.

 

The new wing pays tribute to the quality, craftsmanship and outstanding architecture of the original Pallant House, preserving and emphasising the historic house as an architectural entity. The new wing, the design of which also caused controversy, is an acclaimed addition to Pallant House, and has won several architectural and access awards, including an award from the Royal Institute of British Architects.

 

The new gallery now provides seventeen gallery rooms, as well as a bookshop, education studio, restaurant, library and visitor facilities.

 

Pallant House Gallery

 

 

 

9 North Pallant

 

Chichester

 

West Sussex

 

PO19 1TJ

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tel: +44 (0)1243 774557

 

Fax: +44 (0)1243 536038

info@pallant.org.uk