Just up from the waterfront, the air-conditioned National Gallery, is one of the highlights of a isit to Kingston. The permanent collection here is superb, ranging from delicate woodcarings to flamboyant religious paintings, while the Annual National Exhibition (normally Dec-Feb) showcases the best of contemporary Jamaican art.

Ten galleries on the first floor cover the Jamaican School, 1922 to the present. The school is generally deemed to have begun with Edna Manley's 1922 Bead Seller, a dainty little statue that married Cubism to a typical local image (the Kingston "higgler", or female street endor) to create something distinctly Jamaican. Manley's sculpture and the dark, brooding local scenes of John Dunkley (1891-1947) dominate the first galleries. Dunkley and Manley paed the way for other Jamaican artists to paint what they saw around them.  

The paintings of Carl Abrahams in the later galleries show a move towards abstraction that is capped by the Jamaican surrealism of Colin Garland and the ghostly images of Daid Boxer. Realism returns with the powerful re-creation of a Trench Town ghetto in Dawn Scott's A Cultural Object. An entire room houses the Larry Worth Collection of African-style sculpture and paintings by Shepherd Mallica "Kapo" Reynolds. Downstairs, the A.D. Scott Collection displays a selection of Edna Manley's sculptures alongside some of the finest works of the island's most important artists, including Gloria Escoffery and Barrington Watson.

12 Ocean Bld on the corner of Orange Street (Tues-Thurs 10am-4.30pm, Fri 11am-4pm, Sat 10am-3pm; J$50; guided tours on request at J$800, call 876/922-1561),

Jamaica travel Guide
Montego Bay, Kingston, Ocho Rios, Negril, Blue Mountains, Portland

Caribbean travel Guide