The New Art Gallery Walsall

A run-down post-industrial town in England's Black Country is the site of a fantastic building designed by the young architectural practice of Caruso St John.

The New Art Gallery Walsall is perhaps the most successful of the many art-oriented projects funded by the Lottery Millennium Fund.

The gallery is a massive terracotta- and steel-clad structure, enigmatic and subtle, within which is a complex series of galleries and rooms, part of which houses the remarkable Garman Ryan art collection.

The collection was donated to the people of Walsall in 1974 by Lady Kathleen Garman, wife of Jacob Epstein - a personal and varied collection consisting of more then 350 works of art including 43 works by Epstein himself.

This book documents in text, photographs and drawings a building which has already contributed greatly to the civic standing of the town.

It includes documentation of the remarkable art projects that accompanied the building and tells the story of the struggle to fund a world-class work of architecture, all illuminated by Helene Binet's remarkable photography.