Ever heard of the Brown Collection? Neither had we.
The four-storey mews building — around the corner from Marylebone's Wallace Collection — bills itself as a 'museum', although it might more accurately be labelled a gallery; in the main, it shows off artworks amassed by the British artist Glenn Brown. Indeed, many of Brown's own pieces — surreal forms of knobbly root vegetables; gnarled trees skewing into human hands — are woven into the collection.
Heralding a 'new direction' for the collection is Hoi Polloi, an exhibition exploring how artists have captured 'the people' through drawing, mark-making and sculpture, across five centuries. Running from Wednesday 24 September 2025-Saturday 8 August 2026, the exhibition unfolds over the building's four floors — themed The Ecstatic Mark, The Spiritual Human/Portrait, and The Sublime Body/Flesh — and promising to "explore the body, flesh and spirit, from the drama of the Baroque period to the fractured perspectives of the modern era".
There are works by Italian masters Giovanni Battista Tiepolo and Bernardo Strozzi; English occultist Austin Osman Spare; master etcher and doll enthusiast Hans Bellmer; and conceptual artist Gillian Wearing — alongside lesser-known yet visionary artists such as Gertrude Hermes, Ann Churchill and Boris Petrovich Sveshnikov.
While there is a whiff of self-publicity to the proceedings (and you've got to admit, it's a smart way to promote your own output; it reminds us of Viktor Wynd's cabinet of curiosities in Hackney), this is nonetheless a meatily diverse benefaction of free art, and the Brown Collection also hosts various art history lectures, artist talks, film screenings and life drawing (some free, others paid-for), to keep us coming back.
All told, it promises to be an enriching experience for those who've an insatiable curiosity for art and art history — and have already done the Wallace Collection to death.
The Brown Collection, 1 Bentinck Mews, free entry
