Towner Eastbourne is the town’s art gallery, at Devonshire Park ten minutes inland from the pier, and it is free.
It holds one of the most significant public art collections in the south of England — over 5,000 works — and draws more than 100,000 visitors a year. ITV News described it in 2017 as the region’s biggest art gallery, and it hosted the Turner Prize in 2023.
It moved into its current home in 2009: a purpose-built modern gallery of three floors beside the Congress Theatre in Devonshire Park.
In 2019, for its centenary, the German artist Lothar Götz wrapped the exterior in a mural called Dance Diagonal — bands of colour running across the whole facade. It is visible from a good distance and it is the reason the building reads as a gallery rather than a civic block. Opinions in the town are not unanimous, which is fair enough for a hundred-metre painting.
The strength is British modern art with a Sussex accent.
Eric Ravilious is the centre of it. Towner holds the largest public collection of his work anywhere — watercolours of the Downs, chalk figures, lighthouses and wartime subjects, made largely within a few miles of the gallery, before he was lost on air-sea rescue duty off Iceland in 1942. The Ravilious rooms are what most visitors come for and what they consistently rate most highly.
Around him: Christopher Nevinson, Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant from Charleston up the road, Edward Burra, Alfred Wallis, and a strong holding of twentieth-century printmaking and Sussex landscape.
The gallery also runs an ambitious contemporary exhibition programme — the temporary shows change several times a year, are often politically engaged, and are what makes repeat visits worthwhile.
Free entry to the collection and to most exhibitions; some special shows charge.
Time: an hour to ninety minutes, longer with a good temporary show.
The café and restaurant on the top floor is well regarded in its own right — small plates, and a view over Devonshire Park to the Downs.
Shop with a strong art book and print selection.
Access: fully accessible, with lifts to all floors.
Closed Mondays as a rule; check before travelling.
Devonshire Park is Eastbourne’s cultural quarter — the Congress Theatre, the Devonshire Park Theatre, the Winter Garden, and the lawn tennis courts that host the pre-Wimbledon grass-court tournament each June.
The seafront and pier are a ten-minute walk.
The Wish Tower, a Martello tower, is between the two.
Yes, entry to the collection and most exhibitions is free. Some special exhibitions charge.
The largest public holding of Eric Ravilious anywhere, alongside twentieth-century British and Sussex art.
Lothar Götz’s mural Dance Diagonal, commissioned for the gallery’s centenary in 2019.
An hour to ninety minutes, longer if there is a substantial temporary exhibition.
Yes — the top-floor restaurant is well regarded locally and has a view over Devonshire Park.