The story
Brighton Museum & Art Gallery stands in the grounds of the Royal Pavilion, the fantastical Indian-and-Chinese seaside palace that George the Fourth built as Prince Regent. The museum occupies part of his old stable and riding-house complex, converted after the town bought the estate in 1850.
Its real strength is design. The galleries hold one of Britain's best public collections of twentieth-century decorative art, Art Nouveau and Art Deco furniture, glass and ceramics, the kind of things a stylish resort town accumulated. There is also a fine-art collection of British and European painting and a gallery on Brighton itself, from Regency pleasure town to modern city.
Because it grew out of a royal pleasure palace, the building keeps a certain theatrical air, and the fashionable seaside taste it collects sits naturally in the shadow of the Pavilion's onion domes.
