The Wolverhampton Art Gallery is the city's greatest cultural asset and, by some distance, the most rewarding free attraction in the West Midlands outside Birmingham. The building itself — a confident Victorian Italianate design on Lichfield Street — sets the right tone: a city taking its cultural life seriously.
Inside, the gallery is best known for its exceptional Pop Art collection: Warhol, Lichtenstein, Peter Blake, Richard Hamilton, and others acquired during a remarkably prescient collecting period in the 1960s. The eighteenth-century painted enamels collection is also significant — Bilston was a centre of enamel production, and the gallery holds the most important collection of this distinctive local craft.
The permanent galleries cover British art from the seventeenth century to the present. The temporary exhibition programme is consistently strong. Allow two to three hours; the café is a decent stop for lunch.