Since then, the gallery has hosted a number of major thematic exhibitions including The Place is Here (2017), a landmark survey of Black British Art; States of America (2017), the largest-ever survey of American photography in the UK; Glenn Ligon’s Encounters and Collisions (2015); and From Ear to Ear to Eye (2017–18), an exploration of the politics of listening across the Arab world.

With over 3,000 square metres of floor space, it is one of the largest contemporary art centres in the UK.

The exterior is clad in verdigris scalloped panels with a traditional lace pattern, with large windows that offer direct views from the street into the interior.

[4] Owen Hatherley stated that “this might, irrespective of the leaky roof, be the first masterpiece of British architecture of the twenty-first century.”[5] Nottingham Contemporary is on the oldest site in Nottingham, Garners Hill, it once housed cave dwellings, a Saxon fort and a medieval town hall – before the Victorians swept all aside for a railway line.

A revolutionary concrete casting technique, carried out in Nottingham, has embossed a lace design into the building’s panels, some up to 11 metres high.