The Whitechapel Gallery was founded in 1901 with the aim of bringing great art to the people of East London. From the outset, the Gallery pushed forward a bold program of exhibitions and educational activities, driven by the desire to enrich the cultural offer for local communities and provide new opportunities for extraordinary artists from across the globe to showcase their works to UK audiences, often for the first time.
The Gallery has hosted ground-breaking solo shows from artists as diverse as Barbara Hepworth (1954), Jackson Pollock (1958), Helio Oiticica (1969), Gilbert & George (1971), Eva Hesse (1979), Frida Kahlo (1982), Sonia Boyce (1988), Sophie Calle (2010), Zarina Bhimji (2012), Emily Jacir (2015), William Kentridge (2016), Theaster Gates (2021), and Nicole Eisenman (2023), as well as thought-provoking exhibitions that reflect key artistic and cultural concerns. The Gallery’s focus on bringing artists, ideas, and audiences together remains as important today as it did over a century ago and has helped to cement the East End as one of the world’s most exciting and diverse cultural quarters.
The Gallery takes pride in being locally embedded and globally connected. Under the new Directorship of Gilane Tawadros, its vision is to ensure that the Whitechapel Gallery claims a distinctive and radical position in the social and cultural landscape, building on its pioneering history as a place for invigorated and inclusive engagement with contemporary art.
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