Pier Arts Centre

Outstanding small modern art gallery on Stromness harbour

A genuinely surprising find on the Stromness waterfront, the Pier Arts Centre houses one of the best small collections of twentieth-century British modernist art in Scotland — major works by Hepworth, Nicholson, Naum Gabo, Patrick Heron, and the St Ives school. The collection was a personal gift to Orkney by the writer Margaret Gardiner.

The 2007 extension by Reiach and Hall, a sleek dark-zinc volume slotted next to the older pier buildings, is itself a piece of architecture worth seeing. Contemporary exhibitions also rotate through. Free entry. Cafe on site.

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A story
The core of the collection was given to the people of Orkney by the writer and arts patron Margaret Gardiner in 1979. The works — by Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson, Naum Gabo and other St Ives-school artists — had been gifts from the artists themselves over decades of friendship.

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