Places features

A date has finally been announced for the opening of Nottingham Contemporary.

The arts centre will open it's doors on Saturday 14 November 2009, four years after construction work began.

Nottingham Contemporary will be the largest single gallery space in the East Midlands and one of the largest contemporary arts spaces in the UK.

The building, located on Weekday Cross on the edge of the Lace Market, will have a total floor area of 3,000 square metres, with four large galleries, education rooms, a study and resource centre, a café-bar and a shop.

The architects Caruso St John were influenced by the New York and Berlin warehouses that artists used as flexible "found" space and from the late Victorian industrial warehouses of Nottingham's Lace Market.

The future of art in Nottingham

The Tate, which owns the national collection of contemporary modern art, has announced a partnership with Nottingham Contemporary. It will loan exhibits to the new gallery.

The director of the Tate, Nicholas Serota, says Nottingham Contemporary is one of the most beautiful exhibition spaces he has ever seen.

Interior shot of Nottingham Contemporary

"It is going to be one of the best galleries in Europe."

Alex Farquharson is the director of Nottingham Contemporary:

"It's about time Nottingham got a really ambitious contemporary visual arts centre. I think people will travel for the building but also for the exhibition programme."