The Queen’s Galleries to change names following King’s accession
The two art exhibition galleries showcase the Royal Collection, among the largest and most important art collections in the world.
The Queen’s Galleries in London and Edinburgh will change their names in line with the King, the Royal Collection Trust has announced.
The two art exhibition galleries, located at Buckingham Palace and the Palace of Holyroodhouse, will become The King’s Galleries next year.
They showcase the Royal Collection, among the largest and most important collections of fine and decorative arts in the world and one of the last great European royal collections remaining intact.
It is held in trust by the sovereign for his successors and the nation and is not owned by the King as a private individual.
The gallery in Buckingham Palace was built on the site of Queen Victoria’s private chapel, which was destroyed in an air raid in 1940.
Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip had the chapel redeveloped as a gallery for the Royal Collection in 1962, before it was later re-designed and expanded.
The Holyroodhouse gallery was built between 1999 and 2002, in the shell of the 19th-century Holyrood Free Church and Duchess of Gordon’s School at the palace’s entrance.
Since being opened in their current form by the late Queen in 2002, the galleries have welcome around five million visitors.
The earliest surviving British royal wedding dress, worn by George IV’s daughter Princess Charlotte of Wales in 1816, was put on display in the London gallery earlier this year, while more than 100 artworks from the Tudor court are currently on display there until April 14 2024.
