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National Portrait Gallery, London

1856 establishments in EnglandArt museums established in 1856Charities based in LondonEwan Christian buildingsExempt charities
Grade I listed buildings in the City of WestminsterGrade I listed museum buildingsMuseums sponsored by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and SportNational Portrait Gallery, LondonNon-departmental public bodies of the United Kingdom governmentPhotography museums and galleries in EnglandUse British English from April 2012
National Portrait Gallery (40400017530)
National Portrait Gallery (40400017530)

The National Portrait Gallery (NPG) is an art gallery in London housing a collection of portraits of historically important and famous British people. It was arguably the first national public gallery dedicated to portraits in the world when it opened in 1856. The gallery moved in 1896 to its current site at St Martin's Place, off Trafalgar Square, and adjoining the National Gallery. It has been expanded twice since then. The National Portrait Gallery also has regional outposts at Beningbrough Hall in Yorkshire and Montacute House in Somerset. It is unconnected to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh, with which its remit overlaps. The gallery is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article National Portrait Gallery, London (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

National Portrait Gallery, London
St. Martin's Place, City of Westminster Covent Garden

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N 51.5094 ° E -0.1281 °
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National Portrait Gallery

St. Martin's Place
WC2H 0HE City of Westminster, Covent Garden
England, United Kingdom
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npg.org.uk

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National Portrait Gallery (40400017530)
National Portrait Gallery (40400017530)
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National Gallery
National Gallery

The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London, England. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900.The Gallery is an exempt charity, and a non-departmental public body of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. Its collection belongs to the government on behalf of the British public, and entry to the main collection is free of charge. In 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic it attracted only 1,197,143 visitors, a drop of 50 per cent from 2019, but it still ranked eighth on the list of most-visited art museums in the world.Unlike comparable museums in continental Europe, the National Gallery was not formed by nationalising an existing royal or princely art collection. It came into being when the British government bought 38 paintings from the heirs of John Julius Angerstein in 1824. After that initial purchase, the Gallery was shaped mainly by its early directors, especially Charles Lock Eastlake, and by private donations, which now account for two-thirds of the collection. The collection is smaller than many European national galleries, but encyclopaedic in scope; most major developments in Western painting "from Giotto to Cézanne" are represented with important works. It used to be claimed that this was one of the few national galleries that had all its works on permanent exhibition, but this is no longer the case. The present building, the third to house the National Gallery, was designed by William Wilkins from 1832 to 1838. Only the facade onto Trafalgar Square remains essentially unchanged from this time, as the building has been expanded piecemeal throughout its history. Wilkins's building was often criticised for the perceived weaknesses of its design and for its lack of space; the latter problem led to the establishment of the Tate Gallery for British art in 1897. The Sainsbury Wing, a 1991 extension to the west by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, is a significant example of Postmodernist architecture in Britain. The current Director of the National Gallery is Gabriele Finaldi.

Duke of York's Theatre
Duke of York's Theatre

The Duke of York's Theatre is a West End theatre in St Martin's Lane, in the City of Westminster, London. It was built for Frank Wyatt and his wife, Violet Melnotte, who retained ownership of the theatre until her death in 1935. Designed by the architect Walter Emden, it opened on 10 September 1892 as the Trafalgar Square Theatre, and was renamed to Trafalgar Theatre in 1894. The following year, it became the Duke of York's to honour the future King George V.The theatre's opening show was comic opera The Wedding Eve by Frédéric Toulmouche. One of the earliest musical comedies, Go-Bang, was a success at the theatre in 1894. In 1900, Jerome K. Jerome's Miss Hobbs was staged as well as David Belasco's Madame Butterfly, which was seen by Puccini, who later turned it into the famous opera. This was also the theatre where J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up debuted on 27 December 1904. Many famous British actors have appeared here, including Basil Rathbone, who played Alfred de Musset in Madame Sand in June 1920, returning in November 1932 as the Unknown Gentleman in Tonight or Never. The theatre was Grade II listed by English Heritage in September 1960. In the late 1970s the freehold of the theatre was purchased by Capital Radio and it closed in 1979 for refurbishment. It reopened in February 1980 and the first production under the patronage of Capital was Rose, starring Glenda Jackson. In 1991 comedian Pat Condell performed sketches at the theatre which were later released on DVD.The Ambassador Theatre Group bought the theatre in 1992; this coincided with the successful Royal Court production of Ariel Dorfman's Death and the Maiden. A host of successes followed including the 21st anniversary performance of Richard O'Brien's The Rocky Horror Show and the Royal Court Classics Season in 1995. The theatre is the London headquarters of the Ambassador Theatre Group, as well as the producing offices of their subsidiary Sonia Friedman Productions, whose revival of In Celebration starring Orlando Bloom played until 15 September 2007. Singers Rag'n'Bone Man and Pink filmed their new video, Anywhere Away From Here in the theatre.