Dulwich Picture Gallery announces opening of major transformation in September 2025
- Innovative transformation of the Gallery’s site and three acres of green space to open to the public with a celebratory weekend of events 6-7 September
- New permanent ArtPlay Pavilion by award-winning architects Carmody Groarke plus new site entrance and improved facilities for schools and families
- Artworks in new Sculpture Garden featuring land art by renowned landscape artist Kim Wilkie
Dulwich Picture Gallery has announced a celebratory weekend of events taking place 6-7 September 2025 to mark the completion of major development projects that will transform the public offering of the first purpose-built public art gallery. Extending the visitor experience across three acres of additional green space, it represents the biggest redevelopment at Dulwich Picture Gallery in over 20 years, incorporating a new permanent ArtPlay Pavilion and families’ café, as well as an expansion of the free to access Sculpture Garden. As part of the project, elements of Sir John Soane’s 1811 plans for the Gallery will be restored, including a new site entrance on Gallery Road and the opening up of sweeping views across the gardens.
Central to the developments is the new ArtPlay Pavilion by architecture practice Carmody Groarke housing creative play and activities for families, set in the Sculpture Garden. The ArtPlay Pavilion, supported by the Julia Rausing Trust, will immerse under 8-year-olds in a sensory-rich play space designed by artistic duo Sarah Marsh and Stephanie Jefferies of HoLD Collective. Play activities will be inspired by the Gallery's historic paintings: children will be able to run over Canaletto’s bridge and swing in Poussin’s clouds.
Carmody Groarke will also extend Gallery Cottage to create The Canteen, which will serve as a school lunches area as well as a family café and shop on weekends. These architectural interventions will provide much-needed facilities for the 150 local school groups the Gallery engages with, offering young children art-based learning experiences.
Designed by leading landscape artist Kim Wilkie, The Lovington Sculpture Meadow, which will also open later this year, is a key part of the Sculpture Garden. It has been created in a previously under-utilised field at the south side of the gardens featuring an ‘art forest’ of around 130 newly planted trees designed to enhance biodiversity in the area. The new species-rich meadow includes an undulating land art form inspired by the Gallery’s star work, Girl at a Window (1645) by Rembrandt van Rijn. The Lovington Sculpture Meadow is generously funded by The Lovington Foundation and will celebrate the environmental and health benefits of using green space for art.
This initiative launches a new series of contemporary sculptural installations, which will continually evolve across all areas of the Sculpture Garden. Works by leading contemporary artists will explore themes of nature and play, and connect with the Gallery’s Collection, aiming to spark curiosity and fun for people of all ages. Visitors can expect to encounter interactive sculptures by artists including Amy Stephens and Harold Offeh. New sculptures will join existing works by Yinka Shonibare CBE, Li Li Ren, Peter Randall-Page and Rob and Nick Carter. The latter’s Bronze Oak Grove became the first artwork to be acquired by the Gallery for over a decade in 2024.
Enhancing sustainability, a ground source heat pump will decarbonise the Gallery’s existing heating systems alongside supplying the new buildings, which will be installed with solar panels and are constructed with UK-grown timber frames resulting in low embodied carbon construction.
Jennifer Scott, Director of Dulwich Picture Gallery, said: “What a huge moment this is for Dulwich Picture Gallery as we transform our outdoor spaces. I am immensely grateful to all the supporters who have helped us to make our vision a reality, staying true to the Gallery’s founding idea that great art is made for sharing.”
The developments under the banner ‘Open Art’ will cost £5 million. Support has been secured from trusts and foundations as well as a public campaign, with £20,000 left to raise of the target. Dulwich Picture Gallery is a registered charity and does not receive regular Government or local authority funding. The vision for the project is to establish the Gallery as a must-visit cultural destination, expanding its reach and seeing visitor participation double to support its long-term sustainability.
‘Open Art’ follows on from the success of the Gallery’s temporary Pavilion projects of 2017 and 2019, which demonstrated public appetite for accessible, interactive art in the gardens. Construction began on site in late 2024 and the Gallery has remained open throughout. ‘Open Art’ is driven by the Gallery’s mission—to unlock art for all, to spark ideas and imaginations.
-ENDS-
Notes to editors
For further information or images please contact:
Matthew Brown | matthew@sam-talbot.com | +44 (0) 7989 446557
Alicia Lethbridge | alicia@sam-talbot.com | +44 (0) 7526 204773
Gallery press contact:
Eibhlín Kissack, PR Manager | e.kissack@dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk
Images
Carmody Groarke, ArtPlay Pavilion. Courtesy Carmody Groarke.
Dulwich Picture Gallery Sculpture Garden. Photo by Graham Turner.
Images can be downloaded here.
Principal Supporter
The Lovington Foundation
Major Supporters
Julia Rausing Trust
Manton Foundation
Wolfson Foundation
Garfield Weston Foundation
National Lottery Heritage Fund
The Kusuma Trust
Christina Smith Foundation
Gatsby Charitable Foundation
Rick Mather & David Scrase Foundation
Cockayne – Grants for the Arts: a donor advised fund held at The London Community Foundation
Linbury Trust
The Swire Charitable Trust
Southwark Council
And donors that wish to remain anonymous
‘Open Art’ is also supported by an ongoing public campaign Support a Tree.
Dulwich Picture Gallery is working with 8Build to complete the major redevelopment projects that will be completed in autumn 2025.
Dulwich Picture Gallery
It started here with a simple idea – that great art is made for sharing. Which is why, over 200 years ago, Dulwich Picture Gallery opened its doors and became the world’s first purpose built public art gallery – a sanctuary in the city, dedicated to sharing one of the greatest art collections in the world, with the world. Like most good ideas, it caught on. And happily, we’re no longer the UK’s only public art gallery. Yet we remain dedicated to our mission of unlocking art for all. From historic paintings to contemporary sculpture, we’re committed to bringing art to life and life to art. Finding new and surprising ways
for people to enjoy, appreciate, and be inspired by great art – inside and out.
The Original Art Gallery. Since 1811.
Carmody Groarke
Carmody Groarke is a London-based architectural practice founded in 2006 by Kevin Carmody and Andy Groarke. The practice has developed a reputation for working internationally on a wide range of arts, cultural, heritage and residential projects. Completed work includes the critically acclaimed Windermere Jetty Museum in the Lake District, a temporary shelter for Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Hill House in Scotland and a new gallery for the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester. Current projects include a major refurbishment and extension to the national Design Museum Gent in Belgium, a masterplan for the British Library in Yorkshire with a major new archive building for the national collection and the Bibliothèque nationale de France Conservation Centre in Amiens, France.
Carmody Groarke’s work has been recognised through several prestigious architectural awards, including most recently being shortlisted for the EU Mies van der Rohe Award, the 2021 RIBA Building of the Year Stirling Prize, the Civic Trust National Panel Special Award 2020, the Architects’ Journal Building of the Year 2019 and Building Design Architect of the Year 2018. Four monographs of the practice’s work have been published by El Croquis, 2G, AMAG and A+U. carmodygroarke.com
Kim Wilkie
After 25 years of running his own practice, Kim Wilkie now works as a strategic and conceptual landscape consultant. He collaborates with architects and landscape architects around the world and combines designing with running a small farm in Hampshire, where he is now based. Wilkie studied history at Oxford and landscape architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, before setting up his landscape studio in London in 1989. He continues to teach and lecture in America; writes optimistically about land and place from Hampshire; and works with various national committees on landscape and environmental policy in the UK. Wilkie’s past projects include the V&A’s John Madejski Garden in 2005, the redevelopment of the Chelsea Barracks in London and the landform Orpheus, an inverted pyramid in the Grade I formal landscape at Boughton House in Northamptonshire.
HoLD Collective
Sarah Marsh and Stephanie Jefferies form a dynamic artist duo, whose respective specialisms inform their collective practice. Art that you can hold or be held within, endeavours to challenge and disrupt hierarchical divisions between art and engagement. The sensitivity of their practice can be felt in their work; developing interactive, sensory spaces and resources with organisations including Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Whitechapel Gallery, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester Art Gallery, Yorkshire Sculpture Park and The Hepworth Wakefield.