As London’s Somerset House gears up to celebrate the 25th anniversary of its public opening, in May, its director Jonathan Reekie says that the building has been transformed from a “museum” attraction into a centre for contemporary art and the creative industries.
It may come as a surprise that Somerset House claims to have attracted 2,728,000 visitors in 2023, not far below the 3,097,000 who went to the National Gallery at the other end of the Strand.
The Somerset House figure includes those going to exhibitions organised by the Somerset House Trust, attending fairs run by external organisations, café and restaurant customers, and those simply enjoying the courtyard. It also includes 235,000 who went to the Courtauld Gallery, which rents space.
[Our tenants] help us look at the world in a very interdisciplinary way, with alternative perspectives
Somerset House, with its wings enclosing a large courtyard, was designed by William Chambers in the 1770s and extended in the mid-19th century. It was built for government offices and learned societies, including the Royal Academy of Arts (which occupied it until 1837). With the phased departure of civil servants from the 1990s, the courtyard wings started to be opened up to the public in 2000. The government handed over the lease to the charitable Somerset House Trust for a peppercorn rent, but the trust is responsible for the considerable maintenance bills.
Reekie points out that the museum model of Somerset House in the early 2000s failed to be viable. “It doesn’t work unless you have an incredible collection that people want to come and see,” he says. The building had opened with two major attractions, which were run independently: the Hermitage Rooms and the Gilbert Collection. Visitor numbers quickly fell and seven years later both closed.
Somerset House’s next model was to become a “kunsthalle”, the German term for a venue which presents changing exhibitions organised by outside bodies. Although some proved successful (such as the 2013 show on the fashion editor Isabella Blow), it continued to be difficult to attract sufficient visitors.
Reekie, who arrived as director in 2014, felt that exhibitions in fields such as fashion and photography “competed with the Victoria & Albert Museum”, so he introduced “a completely different model which would provide a programme that was very distinctive”.
He cited last year’s exhibition Cute (on “cuteness” in contemporary culture) and the current exhibition Soil: The World at our Feet (until 13 April), which are not the sort of shows that might obviously be programmed elsewhere. Soil, for example, deals with both science and art.
For those interested in the visual arts, the main attraction remains the Courtauld Gallery, which moved into the north wing in 1989. With its entrance off Aldwych, it is slightly separate from the rest of the complex and is run independently by the Courtauld Institute.
Multipurpose building
The gallery space of Somerset House represents only 13% of the area of the huge building complex, much of it at the courtyard level. At the River Thames end, there is also the Embankment exhibition gallery on the lower level. And at the Aldwych end there is the spacious Courtauld Gallery on one side, with the academic Courtauld Institute on the other.
The home of Somerset House dates back to the 18th century, and housed civil servants before becoming a cultural venue
Photo: Philip Vile
Above and below the courtyard there are hundreds of offices, workshops and studios, which the trust rents out to tenants in the creative industries and arts. Some are let at commercial rents and others are subsidised, with the profits helping to fund the public programme of exhibitions and events. This makes Somerset House self-funding: its income in 2023-24 was £25.5m.
Reekie says that the 2,000 tenants also help drive Somerset House’s cultural programme for the public: “Our model differs from the traditional curatorial one, where you have a few people who sit on high above everyone else.” The community of tenants “helps us look at the world in a very interdisciplinary way, with creative thinking and alternative perspectives”.
As a result, Somerset House now has a visitor profile which is much younger than when it opened with its “museum” attractions a quarter-century ago.
What happened to the original museum attractions?
When Somerset House opened in 2000, its hosted two collections. The Hermitage Rooms provided a venue for temporary exhibitions from Russia’s State Hermitage Museum. It closed after just seven years, because the St Petersburg museum ended most international loans after there was a threat of seizure resulting from a trade dispute with a Swiss-based company.
However, the Hermitage Rooms faced further problems. Its inaugural sponsor was the Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was imprisoned for fraud by Vladimir Putin’s government in 2005 (the Russian president pardoned him in 2013). Although the Hermitage Rooms’ first exhibition on Catherine the Great was highly successful, with 198,000 visitors, its last show managed to attract only 9,300 visitors.
The other museum display at Somerset House was of the Gilbert Collection, mostly gold and silver objects donated by Arthur and Rosalinde Gilbert. It did reasonably well in its first year, but failed to attract sufficient repeat visitors. In 2008 the collection was moved to the Victoria and Albert Museum, where it has a dedicated gallery.
The 2024 fire
A serious fire broke out on 17 August 2024 in a roof void of the west wing of Somerset House. This part of the complex housed offices and fortunately was a considerable distance from the Courtauld Gallery. Although there was water damage and a few offices were destroyed, most tenants were able to regain access within a few days.
The cause of the fire is still under investigation, although arson and building work are believed to have been ruled out. Extensive repairs are now being undertaken, due for completion in 2026. The costs are being met from insurance.
- Soil: The World at Our Feet is at Somerset House, London, until 13 April
