About
The Women's Art Collection at Murray Edwards College, Cambridge, is the largest collection of modern and contemporary art by women in Europe. It holds over five hundred works and — unusually for a collection of this importance — displays them not in a gallery but throughout the buildings and grounds of a working Cambridge college, hung in corridors, stairwells, dining hall, common rooms and study spaces where students live and work every day.
The college was founded in 1954 as New Hall, the third Cambridge college for women, and moved in 1962 into buildings designed by Chamberlin, Powell and Bon — the architects of the Barbican — whose white concrete domes, courts and colonnades were conceived, in the college's own account, as a manifesto for women's education. The collection began in 1986, when an exhibition of work by women artists led to a number of participants donating their pieces, and it has grown by gift ever since. Artists including Maggi Hambling, Lubaina Himid, Mary Kelly, Judy Chicago and Dame Paula Rego have given work.
The collecting policy is straightforward and has never changed: work by women, acquired through donation rather than purchase, shown where it will be lived with rather than stored. That principle has produced a collection with real breadth across painting, sculpture, print, photography, textiles and film, spanning several generations of artists and a wide range of practice from figurative painting to explicitly political conceptual work.
Visiting is genuinely easy, which is not always true of collections held in Cambridge colleges. The collection is open every day from 10am to 6pm and free, with no need to book. Visitors collect a self-guided tour leaflet from the Porters' Lodge inside the main entrance on Huntingdon Road and then walk the college at their own pace. There is also a public programme of talks, exhibitions and events.
Categories:
Plan Your Visit
⏱️ Recommended Visit Duration
💡 Visitor Tips
- Collect the self-guided tour leaflet from the Porters' Lodge inside the main entrance — without it you will simply come across works at random.
- The collection is open every day, 10am to 6pm, free and without booking, which is unusually generous access for a Cambridge college.
- Remember this is a working college; be considerate of students and staff, and expect the occasional room to be in use and inaccessible.
- Allow more time than the size of the collection suggests — the works are spread across a large building complex and finding them is part of the visit.
- Look at the architecture as you go: the Chamberlin, Powell and Bon buildings of 1962 are among the best post-war architecture in Cambridge.
- Combine the visit with Kettle's Yard, about twelve minutes' walk away, which shares something of the same lived-with approach to displaying art.
- There is no visitor parking; use a park and ride site, or walk or cycle from the city centre.
- Check the public programme before visiting, as talks, events and temporary exhibitions run through the year.
Highlights
Europe's Largest Collection of Art by Women
With over five hundred works, this is the largest collection of art by women anywhere in Europe, and it exists because of a single consistent collecting principle maintained since 1986: work by women only, acquired by donation rather than purchase. That approach has produced something a purchasing budget could not — a collection shaped by what artists themselves chose to give to a women's college, which makes it as much a record of solidarity and intent among several generations of women artists as it is an assembly of individual works.
Art You Walk Past, Not Art You Queue For
The collection has no gallery. Works hang in corridors, stairwells, the dining hall, common rooms and study spaces, where students see them every day on the way to lectures and meals. This is a deliberate choice with real consequences: the art is encountered casually, repeatedly and in ordinary circumstances rather than in the concentrated, slightly ceremonial conditions of a museum visit.
For visitors it means walking a working college rather than a gallery circuit, and seeing how differently art reads when it is simply part of where people live.
Rego, Hambling, Himid, Chicago and Kelly
The collection includes work donated by artists of considerable standing, among them Dame Paula Rego, Maggi Hambling, Lubaina Himid, Judy Chicago and Mary Kelly. The range these names alone suggest — Rego's charged figurative narratives, Himid's work on Black British identity and history, Chicago's foundational American feminist art, Kelly's conceptual and text-based practice — indicates a collection that has never confined itself to a single tendency or medium, and which spans both British and international practice across several decades.
Chamberlin, Powell and Bon's Architecture
The college moved in 1962 into buildings by Chamberlin, Powell and Bon, the practice responsible for the Barbican, and the white concrete domes, colonnades and courts are among the more distinctive pieces of post-war architecture in Cambridge. The college describes the design as conceived as a manifesto for women, and the buildings' generosity of scale and light was a deliberate statement about the standing of women's education.
The Grade II listed architecture is inseparable from the experience of the collection, since the two are encountered simultaneously.
Collections
The Women's Art Collection at Murray Edwards College, Cambridge, holds over five hundred works of modern and contemporary art by women, making it the largest such collection in Europe. Begun in 1986 following an exhibition of work by women artists at the college, it has grown entirely through donation from artists, estates and supporters rather than purchase.
The collection spans painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography, textiles, drawing and film, and includes work by artists such as Dame Paula Rego, Maggi Hambling, Lubaina Himid, Judy Chicago and Mary Kelly.
Rather than being held in a gallery, the works are displayed throughout the college's Grade II listed 1960s buildings by Chamberlin, Powell and Bon and their grounds, in corridors, stairwells, the dining hall, common rooms and study spaces.
The Collection on Display
Over five hundred works by women artists hung throughout the college's buildings, corridors, common rooms and grounds.
Themes
Time Periods
Current Exhibitions
No current exhibitions. Please check the museum website for updates.