The Courtauld has introduced plans for 2 new modern artwork galleries and a studying room at London’s Somerset Home, supported by a £10m reward from the Blavatnik Household Basis. The donation brings the Basis’s complete help for the establishment to £20m.
The Blavatnik Modern Galleries are anticipated to open in 2029 as a part of a wider campus redevelopment, costing £82m. This redevelopment can even contain the development of a brand new Blavatnik Studying Room contained in the Courtauld’s remodelled library.
The brand new galleries will host particular exhibitions, artist commissions and occasions, offering what the establishment describes as “a particular area for guests and college students to expertise modern artwork”. College students on the Courtauld Institute’s MA course in curating will play a major position in delivering the programme.
Leonard Blavatnik says: “My household and I’ve taken nice delight in our affiliation with the Courtauld over the previous decade. It has been a privilege to play a number one position in shaping the gallery’s future.”
In keeping with Forbes, Leonard Blavatnik—the founding father of his household basis—is price $26.5 billion, making him the world’s seventy fifth richest particular person. Born in what’s now Ukraine in 1957, then a part of the Soviet Union, he made his preliminary fortune by the privatisation of state-owned aluminium and oil property after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Though he denies having ties to the Russian president Vladimir Putin, Ukraine imposed private sanctions in opposition to Blavatnik in 2023.
Since reopening in 2021 after a significant renovation, designed by 2025 RIBA Stirling Prize-winning architects Witherford Watson Mann, the Courtauld has expanded its modern artwork programming. Current exhibitions have included solo reveals for artists together with Peter Doig and Claudette Johnson, alongside a significant fee by Cecily Brown. The New York-based painter Salman Toor’s first European solo exhibition will open there on 2 October 2026.
Elena Crippa, the Courtauld’s senior curator of latest artwork, exhibitions and tasks, says: “The brand new galleries will likely be a website of potentialities for artists to current distinctive artworks. These new areas will assist us join previous and current artwork and concepts, interact college students and convey dwelling artists to the core of our actions.”
The brand new galleries will likely be positioned on the highest ground of the North Wing of Somerset Home, throughout the new Courtauld Campus—an area designed within the 18th century as a show room for the Royal Society. They are going to be accessible to guests by way of a devoted entrance reverse the primary gallery, offering full public entry to the historic East Wing staircase.
The Turner prize-winning sculptor Antony Gormley is one artist wanting ahead to experiencing the brand new areas. He says in an announcement that it’s “great to have, in such a vigorous mental context, a brand new place to take a look at, expertise, and talk about the artwork of our time”.
