New Walk Museum & Art Gallery

Known officially as the New Walk Museum & Art Gallery this location is home to a stunning collection of artworks by world famous artists ranging from Francis Bacon though to Albrecht Durer and LS Lowry. It also houses an internationally renowned collection of early 20th century German Art, the majority of which is Expressionist art, outlawed by the Hitler and the Nazi era and vilified as decadent and corrupt. This resulted in hundreds of paintings being seized from German museum and art galleries. Furthermore many of the artists were forced to flee their mother-country. Outside Germany, it is the largest collection of its type in the world.

Towards the end of World War II in 1944, the city of Leicester staged an important show of these artworks many of which had been smuggled out of Germany by dealers, collectors and artists. With nearly 400 world-class Expressionist pictures in its collection this gallery can claim to have the finest collection outside Germany. Works by Franz Marc, Lyonel Feininger, Emil Nolde, Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel, Ernst Neuschul, Karl Schmidt-Rottluf and Max Pechstein are to be seen. A major exhibition entitled 'A Journey out of Darkness: Leicester’s Collection of German Expressionist Art' was held in 2009/10.