Visitors of the Bermuda National Gallery will enjoy free entry throughout 2026 thanks to a grant from the Christian Humann Foundation.

The foundation has supported the attraction for four years, allowing equitable access to all of the gallery’s exhibitions.

The move comes after the BNG welcomed a record number of visitors in 2025 at close to 15,000.

Numbers have been rising since admission became free in 2022 when there were just 5,600 visitors in the year. That number leapt to 10,000 in 2023 and has been increasing since.

Jennifer Phillips, the executive director of the gallery, said: “We are so appreciative of the Christian Humann Foundation’s longstanding support of BNG.

“In particular, their sponsorship of our free admission initiative has a tangible impact — museum attendance numbers have increased year over year since the programme’s inception and in 2025, we welcomed a record number of visitors to the gallery.”

The Christian Humann Foundation added: “Our hope is that everyone in the community will come out, experience these incredible exhibits and leave feeling inspired by the arts and all that BNG brings to Bermuda.”

Exhibitions on display in 2025 have ranged from photography and painting to printmaking and puppetry.

They included Andy Warhol: Portraits from the Factory and The Art of Michael K Frith: From Pencil to Puppet.

The gallery offers free tours for classes and camps. More than 500 students visited the BNG in 2025 and 1,400 BNG kids activity booklets — produced to accompany each exhibition — were distributed.

From January through to April, the gallery will also offer free transportation for schools island-wide, thanks to the Hamilton Princess & Beach Club.

The BNG will open four new exhibitions in 2026, beginning with a solo show by Californian-based Bermudian artist Soleé Darrell in March.

This will be followed by an exhibition exploring the work of the late Frederick L. Hamilton, who grew up in Bermuda and was one of the first photographers to take aerial shots of the island.

The Bermuda Biennial makes a return this year and will be juried by Akili Tommasino, a curator for modern and contemporary art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Julie Crooks, a curator of arts of global Africa and the diaspora at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

Also making a return is the Junior Bermuda Biennial in celebration of the gallery’s youngest artists aged 5 to 17.

BNG is located on the first floor of City Hall in Hamilton.

• For more information or to sign up for free school transportation, visit www.bng.bm