National Art Gallery of The Bahamas

The Bahamas' Leading Art Museum

The Commonwealth of the Bahamas, a nation consisting of 700 islands, cays and islets straddles the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean.  With a population of approximately 400,000, the Bahamas is well known for tourism, less so for its visual art heritage.  One institution that was opened in 1996 to preserve this heritage, is the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas (NAGB).  It was established as part of a larger expanded system of museums to record, preserve and historicize the narrative of the Bahamas as an independent sovereign nation.

The museum is housed in the Georgian style Villa Doyle, a mansion built in the 1860s, as the home of the first Chief Justice in The Bahamas.  After years of disrepair and decay, the building was restored, thanks to a fund-raising campaign led by NAGB founding Chairman Dr Gail Saunders.  Today NAGB is a space where the nation’s history is recognized, unpacked and interpreted.

The NAGB is in the capital, Nassau at West and West Hill Streets, in historic Charles Town and on the border of Delancy Town, and is within easy walking distance of Downtown Nassau’s port and main business quarter.

With four gallery spaces, NAGB permanent exhibition (PE) is located on the ground floor. That floor also houses rotating shows drawn from the National Collection, as well as two temporary exhibition spaces on the second floor (T1 and T2).  The PS Room is a project space for monthly interventions. Other facilities on offer are an outdoor theatre, Fiona’s Theatre, for live performances; the Art Park where the first African hospital was built in 1780 and mixed media store.

The NAGB recently announced the appointment of its new Executive Director, Dr Douglas Barkey who has been Dean of Liberal and Fine Arts at the University of The Bahamas (UB) since 2019,

 For more information on the NAGB visit their website at - National Art Gallery of Bahamas

Stay up to date on the latest exhibitions at NAGB Exhibitions – Current Exhibitions 

Also visit our gallery for contemporary Jamaican/Caribbean fine art: EJ Gallery

March 2022