Friends of York Art Gallery

Aesthetica Future Now Symposium
2025-09-18 | York Art Gallery, Exhibition Square, York, YO1 7EW, United Kingdom
Join one of the UK’s leading arts events, taking place right here in York on 18 September 2025. Enjoy a day of inspiring talks and discussions from top curators, artists and leaders, including a Turner-Prize winner and speakers from the Barbican, Tate, Serpentine and more, plus gain exclusive access to the Private View of two new exhibitions at York Art Gallery: Aesthetica Art Prize 2025 and Future Tense.
Friends of York Art Gallery receive 30% off tickets. Members are asked to request a discount code via our contact form. Enter the code at checkout to apply your discount.
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Friends' tour of Cornwall
2025-09-21 08:00 - 2025-09-27 18:00 UTC
*** This tour is fully booked *** Based in Truro, the tour will be by coach from York with visits en route to Tewkesbury Abbey, Hestercombe House and Cheltenham before visiting the Tate St Ives, Barbara Hepworth Museum, Penlee House, Kurt Jackson Gallery, Tremenheere Sculpture Garden, Truro Cathedral and the Minack Theatre. Staying again at Cheltenham on the way home, there will be visits to Coleton Fishacre (home of the D’Oyly Carte) and Elgar’s birthplace.

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Joint Social and Wine Reception with YPS
2025-09-30 17:00 - 19:00 | Bedern Hall, Bartle Garth, YORK, YO1 7AL, United Kingdom
These two venerable York Institutions, FYAG (founded 1948) and YPS (founded 1822) now support the York Museums Trust in its crucial cultural role in the City. This is an opportunity for members of both FYAG and YPS to meet and socialise together, hopefully as a first move for closer collaboration in the future. There will be short talks by Kathryn Blacker, CEO of YMT and the Chairs of the two Societies, David Harbourne (YPS) and Charles Martindale (FYAG).This is a non-profit making event. For payment by cheque contact the organiser Moira Fulton (details below).

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Artwork of the Month - Annunciation by Procaccini.
2025-10-08 11:30 - 12:00 | York Art Gallery, Exhibition Square, York, YO1 7EW, United Kingdom
The next Gallery talk will be on Wednesday 8 October at 11.30am when the subject will be the painting Annunciation by Procaccini.
Who was Giulio Cesare Procaccini? Why does his small-scale Annunciation in York Art Gallery deserve our special attention? Amanda Hilliam, art historian and Friends’ committee member, will explore the technique, function and significance of this work by the Milanese Baroque painter. Striking for its expressive brushwork and vibrant palette, the newly-displayed Annunciation distills the dynamism and emotion of Procaccini’s large-scale public altarpieces into a compact form for private devotion.
Our monthly Artwork of the Month talks usually last half an hour. Booking is not necessary but members are reminded to bring their membership cards for free admittance to the Gallery.

Austen & Turner exhibition at Harewood House
2025-10-10 13:30 - 14:30 | Harewod House, Leeds, LS17 9LG
*** This tour is fully booked *** The Group will meet at Harewood House at 1.20 (self-transport) for a tour conducted by two members of the curating team from the Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies at the University of University of York: Dr Richard Johns, an expert on Turner, and Professor Chloe Wigston-Smith, currently Director of the Centre and an expert on the dress and fashion history and material culture of the Georgian period.
The exhibition looks at two of the artistic titans of the late Georgian period, Jane Austen and J. M. W. Turner, both born 250 years ago, bringing their work together for the first time and exploring how it shapes our view of the country house. Exhibits include paintings, drawing, manuscripts, fashion plates, costumes, and many other objects, including the original manuscript of Sanditon and the paintbox Turner used when visiting Harewood.
The tour is also a visit to the House’s whole interior since the exhibits are scattered throughout. It will take approximately one hour, but members are welcome to stay on afterwards until the House closes.
Only 15 tickets are available for this tour, so early booking is recommended to avoid disappointment.
Update – the tour is now fully booked.

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Curator talk on Medieval Percy Psalter-Hours
2025-10-15 14:00 - 16:00 | York Medical Society Rooms, 23 Stonegate, YORK, YO1 8AW, United Kingdom
Eleanor Jackson, the new Curator of Fine Art at York Art Gallery, acquired an illuminated manuscript for the British Library that was made in York around 1300. She subsequently identified the original owners: Robert and Margery de Percy of Bolton Percy near York. She will talk about this process, and about the manuscript’s wider significance.
This is an excellent opportunity to meet Eleanor. She read History of Art at the University of Cambridge, and subsequently wrote a PhD on pocket gospel books at the University of York. She worked at the British Library as Curator of Illuminated Manuscripts, and her achievements there included the curation of the much-admired exhibition ‘Medieval Women: In Their Own Words’, with its accompanying book of the exhibition (still available for purchase as Medieval Women: Voices and Visions).
The lecture will be followed by tea and refreshments.

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Visit to York Art Gallery Stores - morning
2025-10-16 10:30 - 11:30 | York Art Gallery, Exhibition Square, York, YO1 7EW, United Kingdom
*** Fully booked *** This is an opportunity to see some of the large collection of paintings held in the Art Gallery’s stores. As the space is small, numbers will be restricted to a maximum of 10 for each session.

Visit to York Art Gallery Stores - afternoon
2025-10-16 14:30 - 15:30

Seminar on 'Jephthah' by John Everett Millais
2025-11-04 10:30 - 12:30 | Bar Convent, 17 Blossom Street, YORK, YO24 1AQ
A seminar to be held at the Bedingfield Room, Bar Convent, Blossom Street, on Tuesday 4 November at 10.30am. Over two sessions, 10.30 – 11.15 and 11.45 – 12.30 with a break for coffee and cookie, the speaker, Maddie Hewitson will explore Jephthah, one of John Everett Millais’ major religious paintings.

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This talk will explore Jephthah (1867) by John Everett Millais, one of the artist’s major religious paintings. Drawing its subject from Judges 11, it depicts the moment the Israelite general Jephthah realises that his vow to God has, tragically, condemned his daughter to death by his own hand. The painting explores the emotional depths of the story, with layered expressions and gestures that exemplify the intense psychological detail typical of Millais’s later work. Millais imagines the biblical world through the global and imperial lens of Victorian Britain. I argue that he used Black, Jewish, and mixed-race models, among them the Jamaican-born Fanny Eaton, to populate a Protestant imaginary that was being reshaped by biblical criticism, archaeological discovery, and increased contact with the Middle East. In Jephthah, this results in a striking visualisation of the ancient world that is both culturally hybrid and theologically charged. The talk will situate this work within a wider resurgence of interest in Old Testament narratives among Victorian artists, examining how Scripture was reinterpreted across British art and design in response to contemporary religious, racial, and imperial discourses. Maddie Hewitson

The speaker, Maddie Hewitson, is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Department of Art History, Curating and Visual Studies at the University of Birmingham, having graduated from the University of York where she obtained her BA, MA and PhD. She specialises in nineteenth-century British art and was recently research assistant at the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford for the exhibition ‘Colour Revolution: Victorian Art, Fashion and Design.

Artists, Makers & Friends
2025-11-05 - 2025-11-15 | Sliding Water Gallery, 64 Marygate, York, YO30 7BH, United Kingdom
A selling exhibition to raise funds for the Friends of York Art Gallery
The exhibition will open with a private view on 5 November (booking is essential) and will then be open (booking not required) from 12 midday to 4pm on November 6, 7, 8 and 12, 13, 14, 15.
For the first time in over 10 years, we will stage a selling exhibition of paintings, works on paper, sculpture, ceramics and basket-weaving to raise funds for the Friends of York Art Gallery. The show will feature 12 exceptional York-based artists;

Jake Attree, Ruth Beloe, David Campbell, Angela Cole, Judith Glover, Harold Gosney, Sarah Hall Baqai, Julie Mitchell, Robert Mosley, Rosie Ramsden, Sarah Raphael Balme, and Ilona Sulikova
Click HERE to read more about the artists

The exhibition will officially open with a PRIVATE VIEW on Wednesday November 5 from 6pm to 7.30pm – an ideal opportunity to see and buy a wonderful work of art. Refreshments will be served. BOOK HERE Cost £15
Throughout the exhibition, we will create a series of intimate Meet the Artist sessions. Numbers will be strictly limited to create the very best opportunity to explore the work and learn about the artist’s inspirations directly from them. Refreshments will be served at every one.
Meet the Artist
MEET JAKE ATTREE: Friday 7 November 2pmBOOK HERE Cost £15
MEET JUDITH GLOVER: Wednesday 12 November 2pmBOOK HERE Cost £15
MEET ROSIE RAMSDEN: Thursday 13 November 2pmBOOK HERE Cost £15
MEET ANGELA COLE: Saturday 15 November 12 middayBOOK HERE Cost £15
Please give this new venture from the Friends Committee your generous and enthusiastic support!

Artwork of the Month - Piazza san Martino by Bellotto
2025-11-12 11:30 - 12:00 | York Art Gallery, Exhibition Square, York, YO1 7EW, United Kingdom
The next Gallery talk will be given by Charles Martindale, Chair of the Friends, on Piazza san Martino, Lucca, by Bernardo Bellotto.
Charles has provided this introduction to his talk: ‘This painting, recently returned from an extended tour in Japan, is one of the highlights of the Gallery’s permanent collection. This talk will explore various matters: how was it acquired for York? Who was Bellotto, and why is he little known in Britain in comparison with his uncle Canaletto? What are the characteristics of his art? The work is a personal favourite of mine, partly because I judge it beautiful as well as well-crafted, partly for reasons to do with my life story and overall cultural preferences; these are judgements of a different kind, but both in my view have their role to play in our aesthetic response to works of art.’

Bernardo Bellotto (1722-80), The Piazza San Martino, Lucca, 1742-1746, oil on canvas, 50.8cm x 72cm. Photo credit: York Museums Trust

Gallery talk by Jim Robison, potter
2025-12-03 11:30 - 12:00 | York Art Gallery, Exhibition Square, York, YO1 7EW, United Kingdom
The next Friends’ Talk in the Gallery – Wednesday 3 December at 11.30 am – will be given by Jim Robison, the distinguished American potter – an honorary Yorkshireman by this time, having had a studio in Holmfirth for 50 years. Helen Walsh describes him as a much-loved figure in the pottery world, and an influential teacher – he recently received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Aberystwyth International Ceramics Festival; and he helped to bring the celebrated Ismay collection to York.
In celebration of ‘Not a Pot’ in the Gallery, COCA’s 10th birthday and his 50 years at Holmfirth Jim has created a limited edition of his work for sale here in the Gallery, and in this talk he will be discussing his inspiration and demonstrating how his pieces are made.

Talk by Sir Gabriele Finaldi, Director, National Gallery London
2026-02-25 18:30 - 19:30 | Tempest Anderson Hall, Yorkshire Museum, YORK, YO1 7FR
Sir Gabriele Finaldi will give a talk ‘The National Gallery: A Growing Collection’, followed by a conversation with Professor Charles Martindale, Chair of the Friends, about his career and role as Director of one of the greatest galleries in the world.
The National Gallery has been much in the news recently. On May 10 2024 it became 200 years old, and the bicentenary celebrations continued into 2025, including the National Treasures exhibitions across the country (York receiving Monet’s The Water-Lily Pond). Its redisplay of the entire collection was received with great enthusiasm by art critics and public alike. The Sainsbury Wing entrance has now been remodelled as the Gallery’s principal entrance, and a new Members House has been designed. More recently it has won very substantial funds for further exciting capital developments, including space for 20th-century art and a research centre. And all this at a time of massive financial challenges in the cultural sector as a whole.
Sir Gabriele has been the principal architect of these successes. His doctoral thesis at the Courtauld was on the Spanish baroque artist Ribera. In 2002 he was appointed Deputy Director for Collections and Research at the Prado in Madrid, and he has a special association with Spanish art (including Velázquez, Zurbarán, Murillo, Sorolla, Picasso). As a curator he has taken the lead in numerous exhibitions in the UK, Spain, Italy, and Belgium. He was appointed Director of the National Gallery in 2015, and knighted in 2025 for services to art and culture.
This is a rare opportunity to hear this major art-world figure.
Organisers: Moira Fulton (mfulton58@gmail.com); Charles Martindale

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Normandy Tour - Monet and Giverny
2026-05-24 - 2026-05-27
This four-day coach tour of Normandy has been arranged for the Friends by Travel Editions and includes visits to sites associated with Impressionism and Monet, including Giverny, Rouen and Honfleur. Accommodation will be at the Radison Blu Hotel, Rouen. The tour starts at Ashford in Kent where we will join the coach for the journey to Dover and then take the ferry to Calais. Ashford is easily reached by frequent trains from St Pancras Station, which is a 5 minute walk from Kings Cross. The cost of travel from York to Ashford is not included.
See the Travel Editions flyer for more information and the itinerary. Please note that the mention of Eurotunnel under the heading ‘Included in the price’ is a mistake – travel is by ferry.

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Please note that there is a £20 per person admin fee to cover our time and costs for arranging this tour.

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Friends tour to Sussex
2026-09-28 - 2026-10-02
This five-day coach tour to Sussex has been arranged for the Friends by Travel Editions. Departing from York Memorial Gardens on Monday 28 September, we will visit Wardown House Museum & Gallery en route. Accommodation will be at the four-star Holiday Inn on Brighton Sea Front. The tour will include Farleys House & Towner Eastbourne Museum & Gallery, Ditchling Museum of Art & Craft, Charleston in Lewes and Charleston Firle, Berwick Church & Monk’s House. We will visit the Henry Moore Studios on our way back to York on Friday 2 October.
The cost is £995 pp including accommodation, breakfasts, 2 dinners, 1 lunch and all entrance fees as per the itinerary.

Click here for the Travel Editions flyer

Download a booking form

Please note that there is a £20 per person admin fee to cover our time and costs for arranging this tour.

Click to pay the admin fee
