Saturday 7 March 2026 after a successful refurbishment programme.

Southampton City Art Gallery will reopen on Saturday 7 March 2026 after a successful refurbishment programme.  As part of a series of exciting new displays, the opening exhibition will be by acclaimed British artist Emma Richardson.

‘Levitate Me: Desire, Ecstasy and The Sublime’ is a major solo exhibition of new work which will feature a striking series of oil paintings that continue Richardson’s exploration of desire, euphoria and the awe-inspiring natural world through a female lens.

This exhibition holds particular significance in Southampton, where Richardson was born and lived for much of her life. A regular visitor to the Gallery, Richardson has selected works from the city’s collection, to be shown alongside her own, highlighting both the influence and relevance of specific artists, and creating a dialogue between contemporary and historic voices.

The rest of the reopening displays will feature:

Highlights from our internationally renowned collection, with an opportunity for the general public to choose artworks for display. 

A diverse selection of artworks that have most recently been added into the city’s collection, on display in the Gallery for the first time.

A rich display of rarely seen works on paper that have been digitised and made available online during the Gallery’s temporary closure, as part of the Arts Council England supported Unlocking Collections project.

Photographs of the refurbishment programme by award winning Southampton-based architectural photographer Joe Low.

The completion of the refurbishment work ensures that this part of the Grade II* listed Civic Centre and the nationally important art collection are preserved for current and future generations.  A grant of £2.23m was received from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s Museum Estate and Development Fund (MEND), which is administered by the Arts Council England (ACE).

Councillor Alex Winning, Leader of the Council, said: “After a lot of hard work and a complex refurbishment programme I’m really excited that we will be reopening in March next year!  We look forward to welcoming residents and visitors back to our beautiful Art Gallery – all part of creating a vibrant cultural destination.

We are honoured that our opening exhibition is by an artist born right here in our city. It’s great to be able to play a small part in supporting Emma Richardson’s artistic journey, alongside her successful musical career - and she is just one example of the amazing talent we have right here in Southampton.”

Phil Gibby, Area Director, Arts Council England, South West, said: “This is fantastic news for Southampton - a place of strategic importance to Arts Council England, and where communities can now reconnect with their local gallery and learn from the stories and objects that shape their city.

I’m especially pleased to see the re-opening marked by an exhibition from an artist who has been supported through our Developing Your Creative Practice programme.

Claude Monet, The Church at Vetheuil, 1880, oil on canvas copyright Southampton City Art Gallery

We’re proud to have invested in the Gallery’s transformation through the Museum Estate and Development Fund, and our Unlocking Collections programme, helping to make its significant collections fully accessible to all. I look forward to witnessing the positive impacts this new chapter brings.”

Emma Richardson, said: “Southampton is my hometown and I have many fond memories of creating music and art here, as well as performing and exhibiting in the city. I frequently visit the gallery and have always been inspired by the exhibition programme and extraordinary permanent collection. To be showing my paintings in this magnificent space is an absolute honour and I am thrilled to be the first artist invited to exhibit at the gallery after the refurbishment.”

Southampton City Art Gallery holds an internationally-renowned fine art collection often described as one of the best outside London. Its nationally important collection comprises art works spanning eight centuries of European art from the Renaissance to the present day. The core, however, is British 20th century and Contemporary art.

Alongside displays of the collection, the gallery features a regular programme of temporary exhibitions in collaboration with leading artists and arts institutions in its stunning art deco building, opened in 1939.

Admission is free. More at Southampton City Art Gallery.

Emma Richardson

Born in Southampton in 1982, Emma Richardson is an artist and musician with a creative career spanning nearly twenty years. She graduated from Wimbledon School of Art, London with a BA in Painting in 2004 and has exhibited in solo and group shows in London, Margate, Southampton, Hong Kong, Barcelona and Madrid.

In 2021 she was awarded the Develop Your Creative Practice grant from Arts Council England and had her first international solo exhibition at Yoko Art Gallery in Barcelona. In 2022 she completed three years on the Turps Correspondence Course and returned to Barcelona for her first international painting residency culminating in her second solo show in the city. Her work is held in a number of private collections worldwide.

Richardson is also a musician, and previously wrote and performed with Band of Skulls for six albums. Her paintings appear on a selection of their album and single releases. She is currently the bassist and backing vocalist with the Pixies and contributed to their latest album The Night The Zombies Came.

The Unlocking Collections project is being supported using public funding by Arts Council England, through its Unlocking Collections campaign within National Lottery Project Grants, set out to enable museums to develop their collections-based work and increase public engagement with their collections.

Running over 2025 in partnership with Southampton Solent University, the project is digitising over 1,000 works on paper in the Gallery’s collection, making them available to audiences online.

About Arts Council England 

Arts Council England is the national development agency for creativity and culture. Our vision, set out in our strategy Let’s Create, is that by 2030, we want England to be a country in which the creativity of each of us is valued and given the chance to flourish, and where every one of us has access to a remarkable range of high-quality cultural experiences.

Between 2023 and 2026 we will have invested over £467 million of public money from Government, alongside an estimated £250 million each year from The National Lottery, to help ensure that people in every part of the country have access to culture and creativity in the places where they live. Until Autumn 2025, the National Lottery is celebrating its 30th anniversary of supporting good causes in the United Kingdom: since the first draw was held in 1994, it has raised £49 billion and awarded more than 690,000 individual grants. Visit our website to learn more about our work.