The second edition of London Gallery Weekend (LGW) will take place from 13-15 May. Last year's inaugural edition, held in June, involved 140 galleries from the city's central, east and south neighbourhoods. According to a LGW press release, around 40,000 visitors attended the various venues over three days.
This year, LGW is increasing its institutional focus, partnering with the UK charity Art Fund to launch a focus group to establish long-term partnerships and "patterns of mutual support" between the nation's regional museums and the capital's commercial gallery sector. The partnership with Art Fund will also create a budget for 20 regional curators from the UK to travel to London to attend the gallery weekend.
"We are fortunate to have an extraordinary art ecology in the UK," says Art Fund's director Jenny Waldman in a statement. "The challenges of the pandemic over the last two years have shown that we can’t take this for granted and must find new ways to strengthen it for the future. One way to do this is by forging new relationships between museums, galleries and artists, and this partnership shall help us all to do this—for the benefit of museum goers and art lovers everywhere."
Like last year's edition, participation costs will range from £300 to £3,000 with bigger galleries subsidising smaller ones.
"London Gallery Weekend has provided the impetus to refocus on how much potential there is locally, and we are looking forward to a 2022 edition which offers a broader public programme of events and performances across the city, both within the galleries participating and beyond," says Jeremy Epstein, the founder-director of London Gallery Weekend.
The Art Newspaper will collaborate with London Gallery Weekend for a second year as an official media partner.