Images that tell the story of war and conflict over more than 100 years are to go on display for the first time next year in new Imperial War Museum galleries.
A multimillion-pound donation from the Blavatnik Family Foundation has enabled the museum to build art, film and photographic galleries at its London base. Acquisitions will be displayed alongside works from the museum’s existing collection, which dates from the first world war to the present day.
Among the works visitors will be able to see are Walter Sickert’s 1914 painting Tipperary, which the IWM recently bought with support from the Art Fund and the National Heritage Memorial Fund. Sickert painted several versions of Tipperary, but this is the only version that includes a soldier.
Other artworks include John Singer Sargent’s six-metre-long 1919 painting Gassed, which brought home to audiences the reality of first world war fighting, and paintings by Paul Nash, Laura Knight and Steve McQueen.
The galleries will include images from the IWM’s collection of more than 11m photographs, including ones by Cecil Beaton, Olive Edis, and the last picture by Tim Hetherington, taken on the day he was killed by shrapnel during the 2011 civil war in Libya.
A highlight of the IWM’s 23,000 hours of film footage is Peter Jackson’s award-winning 2018 film They Shall Not Grow Old marking the centenary of the end of the first world war.
Helen Mavin, the head of photographs at the IWM, said the images included ones taken by people involved in conflict, such as soldiers or medics, who happened to have access to cameras or felt compelled to record their experiences.
“Across the chronological period we’re covering, you see a lot of the same themes coming up – comradeship, hardship, new things they’re experiencing. These are wonderful records of the individual experience of war; not all atrocity images, some of them are much more intimate, and engaging and compelling,” she said.
“People have found a need throughout history to visually record their experiences. These are records that are very emotional, and it’s worth remembering that there’s always someone behind the camera making choices about what is seen and what’s not seen.”
The Blavatnik Family Foundation is headed by Sir Len Blavatnik, an oil and media magnate who also owns Warner Music. Last year Blavatnik was named as the UK’s richest person, with a fortune of £23bn.
The Ukrainian-born businessman, who made his fortune in Russia, said: “I have long taken a special personal interest in the history of conflict, and the experience of war.”
The IWM’s new exhibition space, the Blavatnik Art, Film and Photography Galleries, will open to the public in late 2023.
• This article was amended on 8 February 2022. Tipperary was bought with the help of the National Heritage Memorial Fund, not the National Heritage Lottery Fund as stated in an earlier version.
