The Laing Art Gallery opened in 1901 thanks to a £20,000 donation from local wine and spirit merchant, Alexander Laing. Throughout its first seventy five years until 1976 the building of a 20th Century collection came under the direction of one family: firstly, C. Bernard Stevenson, and then his son B. Collingham Stevenson. It has benefited from a large number of important gifts and bequests from prominent local industrialists, public figures and the Contemporary Art Society, and many of the important figures representing the development of Modern British art are represented in the collection as well as artists linked to the nearby Cullercoats artist colony.