MOSTYN Art Gallery – the building on the right in the below picture – is a contemporary art gallery in Llandudno, Wales. The history of the gallery begins in 1895 in Conwy with the Gwynedd Ladies’ Art Society. They asked the philanthropist and photographer Lady Augusta Mostyn to secure new premises for them and this building became the home of the society from 1901 to 1903. Women were not permitted in the male artist’s societies so this is possibly the first art gallery dedicated to exclusively exhibiting work by female artists in the world. Interestingly that wasn’t the original intention of Lady Augusta who wanted it to be a space for local people to use (many of the Society members were actually based elsewhere in the UK) and eventually the Society was asked to leave.
The Grade II listed building seemed to change hands after Lady Augusta’s death and was requisitioned for a time during the First World War as a drill hall and during the Second World War as a storage room for the Inland Revenue (now HMRC). It didn’t host another gallery until 1979. It was refurbished in 2010 and rebranded as just “MOSTYN” and continues as an exhibition space today.
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