Free Exhibits in London

Here are just some of CIEE’s favourites: 

National Gallery 

With more than 2,000 paintings, the National Gallery welcomes millions of visitors a year. Botticelli, Da Vinci, Caravaggio and Van Gogh all reside less than a mile from us at CIEE. You don’t have to take one of our courses in art history to enjoy these works. The galleries are open for all to wander. One of the greatest pleasures of the gallery is turning a corner and seeing a world-famous painting quietly hanging there, waiting for you to see it. 

Natural History Museum 

With more than 80 million objects spanning 4.6 billion years; the National History museum puts its dinosaur skeletons, meteorites and a fragment of moon rock on display for all to see. The Natural History Museum is at the centre of ensuring environmental protection, creating greater biodiversity and securing sustainability. It’s a museum that has billions of years of experience to lend our students and its story confronts us with what we have hunted to extinction – the Great Auk and what we are fighting so hard to preserve.  

Victoria and Albert Museum 

The world’s largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, the V & A explores human creativity on a vast plain. Housed in one of the finest examples of Victorian architecture, the museum provides an insight into centuries of some of humankind’s finest aesthetic endeavours. The V & A is also home to the largest and most comprehensive collection of dress in the world and supported by designers like Chanel and Dior, it is a fantastic trove for students to visit.  

Tate Modern  

Britain’s national museum of modern and contemporary art, the Tate Modern, is housed on the banks of the Thames in the former Bankside Power Station. It holds paintings, sculptures and more by artists such as Picasso, Rothko, Pollock and Warhol. The Tate also provides a platform for podcasts about art such as, ‘The Art of Persona’ or ‘How has London inspired French artists?’, and free step-by-step guides about painting, such as ‘How to paint flowers like a Pre-Raphaelite.’