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From Concept to Icon: New architecture exhibition opens at UCL

8 July 2026

The UCL Art Museum opens the doors to its intimate Prints & Drawings Room for a new exhibition tracing the extraordinary evolution of UCL’s iconic Wilkins Building.

A drawing of the façade of UCL's Wilkins Building

From Concept to Icon is a free architectural exhibition, in the heart of UCL’s central London campus, tracing the history of the Wilkins Building, originally designed by English neoclassical architect William Wilkins, who also famously designed The National Gallery.  
  
Rarely seen drawings, engravings, watercolours, sketches and photographs from the collections of UCL Art Museum and UCL Special Collections reveal the evolution of an icon.  

Colour painting of the Wilkins building from 1835

The displays chart 200 turbulent years of the building's architecture, from its phased construction in 1827 and the financial constraints that shaped its early form, through to a fire that gutted the east wing in 1836, the near-total destruction in the Blitz of 1940-1, and a painstaking post-war restoration led by The Bartlett School of Architecture’s Professor Albert Richardson, that rebuilt the dome in line with Wilkins's original specification.  

Highlights include original sketches from the 1820’s architectural competition for the first secular university in England, George Scharf's atmospheric view of the Flaxman Gallery, wartime sketches of the bomb-damaged building, and John Aldridge's affectionate 1961 study of students relaxing among the portico's columns. 

Two sketches - an unfinished sketch of the UCL portico dome and a sketch of the completed Flaxman Gallery

The exhibition has been curated by Survey of London, an internationally renowned team who have been documenting the buildings of London since 1890 and are now based at UCL's Bartlett School of Architecture.  

Concept to Icon accompanies the Survey's newly published monograph University College London: The Bloomsbury Campus, the first comprehensive account of the historic core of UCL's estate, published to mark UCL’s bicentenary in 2026.  

Colin Thom, Director of the Survey of London and co-author of the book, said: 

““The intensive research carried out for our new monograph volume on UCL’s Bloomsbury Campus has brought a richer understanding of the 200-year history and evolution of UCL’s Wilkins Building on Gower Street - the first building erected for London’s first university, designed to reflect its radical progressive ideals and today still an iconic symbol of UCL’s identity.

"This celebratory exhibition will appeal to anyone with an interest in London’s architectural heritage, the development of the historic district of Bloomsbury, and the progress of British higher education.” 


Plan your visit  

Visit From Concept to Icon every Wednesday, 1pm-5pm during the UCL Art Museum's Prints & Drawing Room's opening hours. The Prints & Drawing Room is located on UCL’s central London Bloomsbury campus. Access is step free.

Find out more and plan your visit. 

From Concept to Icon is part of Two Centuries Here, our major, multi-space UCL200 exhibition, exploring UCL's past, present and future exhibition, and our role and influence in society. Open to the public until Summer 2027. 

Plan your visit to the Two Centuries Here exhibition.
 

Explore further  

Images

  • Top image: A drawing of the façade of UCL's Wilkins Building for the architectural competition of 1826 (LDUCS-4393).
  • Second image: View of the Wilkins Building from Upper Gower Mews, George Sidney Shepherd, dated 1835, likely 1836. Watercolour, pencil with green arabic and white, UCL Art Museum, LDUCS-4587.
  • Third image (left): Section, plan and elevation of the dome, William Wilkins, 1827. Ink and wash, UCL Art Museum, LDUCS-4378
  • Third image (right): The Flaxman Gallery at its completion in 1851, The Flaxman Gallery, George Scharf, c.1851. Engraving from UCL Art Museum, LDUCS-2849