National Portrait Gallery's Jenny Saville exhibition gave 14,000 free tickets to young people
- maxwell museums
- 6 days ago
- 2 min read
The National Portrait Gallery’s recent Jenny Saville exhibition saw 14,000 young people take up an innovative offer of free tickets, according to figures shared exclusively with maxwell museums.
Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of Painting was a critical and commercial success for the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) in London last year, with the art critic from the Telegraph hailing Saville "a genius" and saying the exhibition "includes one of the great paintings of our age."
In a rare move, free tickets were available to anyone under the age of 25 to visit, an initiative funded by an anonymous donor.
In stats shared with maxwell museums, I can reveal that 13,992 of these free tickets were issued during the exhibition’s run from June to September 2025, a number the NPG says was “a great success.”
Denise Vogelsang, Director of Audiences at the National Portrait Gallery, spoke to me and this website to explain the thinking behind the initiative. They “are very aware that the cost of exhibition tickets can be a barrier” for young people she told me. Under 25s were targeted to “increase access as much as possible.”
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“We aim to be a place for everyone, so engaging young people is one of the NPG’s key aims,” Vogelsang said. “For the Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of Painting exhibition last summer, we were delighted that an anonymous donor provided support so we could offer free tickets to under 25s.”
Vogelsang added that bosses were particularly pleased that of the 14,000 young people who attended, half of them “had never visited the Gallery before.”
“Our vox pop interviews with visitors indicated the offer was not only appreciated by young people, but also mixed-age groups visiting, as it brought down the overall cost of their day out” she said.
The NPG would “very much like to repeat the free ticket scheme, if we were able to secure support from a funder,” Vogelsang said.
But while there won’t be free tickets for young people in the NPG’s upcoming exhibitions, they can still secure tickets at a discounted price.
Opening later this year, both Lucian Freud: Drawing into Painting and Catherine Opie: To Be Seen will have £5 tickets for under 25s on Friday and Saturday nights.
