Pallant House Gallery
9 North Pallant Chichester West Sussex PO19 1TJ
Chichester’s wonderful modern art gallery – ‘the home of Modern Art in the South’ as it calls itself – houses one of the most important collections of British art in the country, and is an absolute gem. A large part of the gallery’s charm lies in its magnificent setting: a creaky floored, Queen Anne townhouse houses the rotating permanent collection, while temporary exhibitions take place in an award-winning contemporary extension next door. The collection – a diverse mix of ceramics, furniture, sculpture and paintings, including works by John Piper, Edward Paolozzi, Lucian Freud, Henry Moore, Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, Walter Sickert and Peter Blake – started out with a bequest from Walter Hussey, Dean of Chichester Cathedral, in 1982, and has grown to become an eclectic ‘collection of collections’, with British Pop Art rubbing shoulders with eighteenth-century Bow Porcelain and Chippendale furniture. Installations often take over the grand stairwell of the townhouse, and there’s a free tour of the collection’s highlights every Saturday.
