Favourite UK museums and galleries: readers' travel tips

Hark back to carefree clubbing and be uplifted by sublime paintings at our readers’ pick of well-loved museums and art collections

I recently visited the newly reopened Barber Institute of Fine Arts at Birmingham University (free but advance booking essential). It was the last gallery I visited before lockdown, and the first since, and it was like seeing old friends. It is a little jewel of a gallery, with works by, among others, Simone Martini, Claude, Degas, Canaletto and, a personal favourite, a lively Gainsborough showing his two daughters clambering up into a hay cart. Housed in a listed art deco building, it is a lovely place to while away an hour, followed by a cake on the terrace at the nearby Winterbourne House.
Rosalind Napier