Our Story

Crescent House was bought by Scarborough Corporation in September 1942 for £3,000 and for five years was used as a children’s nursery and welfare clinic. In 1947, the Council’s Libraries and Museums Committee decided to create an Art Gallery here.

Originally, the Gallery did not occupy the long gallery, which currently shows eighteenth and nineteenth century oil paintings.  This space formed part of the Caretaker’s quarters as well as the rooms in the basement area now Crescent Arts.  The Caretaker was responsible for the three buildings on the Crescent: Wood End, a Natural History Museum, and Londesborough Lodge, administrative offices for the Council and the Art Gallery.

ScarboroughArt Gallery did not have much of a collection of fine art when it first opened.  Though the Scarborough Corporation already owned the Sir Meredith Whitaker collection, which came in 1937, two works by John Jackson, and watercolours by HB Carter. 

The original exhibition Scarborough through Three Centuries occupied the whole available display space at that time.  Reports describe how the exhibition was hung over both floors and works by Francis Nicholson filled a whole room whilst HB Carter was represented by ‘more than a dozen works’.  The journalist at the time noted that it was John Piper’s watercolours that provided ‘a striking contrast to the strictly conventional note of the exhibition as a whole.’  The exhibition was shown for a relatively short time, from 17 November 1947 to 4 January 1948.  Perhaps the reason for this was because major works were borrowed from the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum. 

The Gallery has since become well known for showing a variety of national touring exhibitions as well as originating major new shows.