Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum, Art museum and Grade II* listed building on East Cliff Promenade, Bournemouth, England.
The Russell-Cotes Art Gallery is an art museum housed in a cliff-top residence in Bournemouth overlooking the English Channel. The building preserves its Victorian rooms where paintings, sculptures, and objects collected during travels around the world are displayed throughout.
Merton Russell-Cotes gave this house to his wife Annie as a birthday gift in 1901, and the couple opened it to the public in 1908. The building was constructed in the Art Nouveau style and reflects the collecting interests of a late Victorian family.
The gallery displays works by female artists of the 1800s alongside European paintings and British art from the Victorian era. The rooms themselves tell a story through their furnishings and collected pieces, showing what mattered artistically to a wealthy family of that time.
The building sits on a cliff accessed by stairs and paths from the town center, with the museum providing manual wheelchairs for visitors. A café with terrace seating provides a place to rest while taking in views of the gardens and coastline.
Many objects in the museum come from the Russell-Cotes couple's travels to distant lands, reflecting their taste for rare and unusual pieces. This personal collection makes the place less like a traditional art museum and more like a window into one family's passion for collecting and exploring the world.
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