Foundations 1868 - 1887

In 1868 South London Working Men's College opened at 91 Blackfriars Road marking the beginnings of what is now known as the South London Gallery (SLG). The Principal was Professor T. H. Huxley (biologist and grandfather of Aldous Huxley), the manager William Rossiter.

The College moved to larger premises at 143 Kennington Lane in 1878 and later that year a Free Library was opened there, the first in South London. The following year, Rossiter organised an exhibition of art works from private collections at the Library. This endured and the name was changed to the Free Library and Art Gallery.

When the borough started to provide a free library service in 1881 the Free Library and Art Gallery moved to New Road, Battersea and then to 207 Camberwell Road in 1887. The first President of the College, Library and Gallery was Prime Minister William Gladstone. Rossiter also enlisted the support of leading artists Edward Burne-Jones, G. F. Watts and Sir Frederic Leighton, President of the Royal Academy who replaced Gladstone as President of the Gallery in 1887.

Building the South London Gallery 1889 - 1949

Rossiter purchased the freehold of Portland House in Peckham Road in 1889, moved into the house and began work on building a new gallery in the grounds. The South London Fine Art Gallery opened on 4 May 1891, showing a changing programme of fine and applied arts. A collection began to form from works donated by artists and subscribers to the Gallery.

In 1892, the newspaper magnate and philanthropist John Passmore Edwards offered the Gallery £3000 to build a lecture hall and library and the extension was opened by the Prince of Wales the following year.

When in 1896 the Gallery was transferred to the Vestry of Camberwell, the local authority of the time, William Rossiter was forced to retire. He died not long afterwards. Passmore Edwards offered a further £5000 to finance a Technical Institute in memory of the recently deceased Lord Leighton.

The Technical Institute, built on the site of Portland House, was opened on 6 January 1898 by Sir Edward Poynter, President of the Royal Academy. The Institute would later become Camberwell College of Art and its headmaster, Cecil Burns, was also Director of the Gallery. In 1904, control of the art school was transferred to the London County Council, while the Gallery remained under local authority control.

At the outbreak of the Second World War the Gallery was turned into a Food Office.

In April 1941 the Passmore Edwards Lecture Hall and Library was severely damaged during an air raid and was subsequently demolished after the war. The Gallery re-opened in 1949 with an annual programme of temporary exhibitions.

Exhibitions and the collection 1950 - 2003

Although the collection was no longer the centrepiece of the Gallery's displays it continued to grow. In 1951, Camberwell's Libraries Committee commissioned local artists to produce work featuring scenes from their area to become part of the collection. Works by Modern British artists, including John Piper, Christopher Wood and Duncan Grant, were purchased in 1953 to celebrate the coronation and a collection of more than 500 20th century prints was initiated in the 1960s.

1961 saw Dorothy King appointed Keeper of the Collection, retaining the post until 1974 when Kenneth Sharpe took up the post for the next 18 years. Highlight exhibitions during this period included retrospectives of William Coldstream, John Bratby, Valentine Prinsep, Anthony Eyton and Martin Bloch. In 1965, local government re-organisation brought the gallery under control of the new London Borough of Southwark.

Ten years of contemporary art 1992-2002

With the appointment of David Thorp as Director in 1992, the exhibition programme began to focus on the latest developments in contemporary art and the Gallery came to be known as the South London Gallery. After a gap of ten years, the SLG began once again to collect contemporary works relating to South London with the help of the Contemporary Art Society (CAS). Purchases in this period included works by Antony Gormley, Anish Kapoor and Tracey Emin.

The Gallery’s profile and visitor figures grew enormously as it began to stage exhibitions by internationally acclaimed artists such as Gilbert & George, Anselm Kiefer and Sherrie Levine, as well as younger artists such as Tracey Emin, Gavin Turk and Ann Sofi-Sidén. This programme saw the SLG short-listed in the Prudential Awards for the Arts in 1996 and Director David Thorp nominated for the Prudential Creative Britons Award the following year.

In 1999 the Gallery joined the CAS’s Special Collection Scheme, and purchased works by Sarah Lucas, Keith Coventry and Angus Fairhurst among others. In the same year SLG Curator, Donna Lynas, launched the Live Art programme with performances by Marcia Farquhar, Francesca Vilalta Olle, Franko B and Stuart Brisley, and a year later the Arts Council committed £15,000 a year to it's continuation. In 2000 the Gallery was accepted onto Stage 1 of the Arts Council’s Stabilisation Programme, with a grant of £30,000 to look at the viability of becoming independent from Southwark Council.

Margot Heller was appointed Director in 2001. In January 2002 the SLG newspaper was launched and the exhibitions programme continued, including solo exhibitions by Keith Tyson, Christian Boltanski and Joëlle Tuerlinckx, and the group touring show, 20 Million Mexicans Can't Be Wrong. Purchases for the collection through the CAS have included works by Ross Sinclair, Christian Boltanski and Keith Tyson. The Gallery also made a successful bid to Stage 2 of the Arts Council’s Stabilisation Programme for a grant of £416,000. In the same year, architects Stanton Williams and the artist Ori Gersht were appointed to develop an architectural plan for enhancement of the SLG building.